Uniting the Heavens and the Earth
by Shadsie
Summary: Hylia's children have returned to the Surface. Link and Zelda face the challenge of building a kingdom. Through tragedy and triumph, the people of the sky will become the people of the land. A new nation is created through the work and lives of many individuals - these are their stories, making up the tale of a frontier.
1. The Legend of Groose

_**Disclaimer:** The Legend of Zelda belongs to Nintendo. This it not for profit. _

_**Notes:** Something of an experiment, as all my long-chaptered fics are. ZeLink and other pairings – mostly canon, but the story is principally gen in flavor. My own "epic" take on the kingdom-building post-Skyward Sword / pre-everything else in the series. An epilogue to Skyward Sword, of sorts. It's a concept so "original" I could just roll my eyes... Hopefully, it will be a decent fic despite the commonality of the concept._

_As of July 5, 2012, chapters 1-10 have been modified from their original versions. I re-edited to hopefully clean up small errors, keep continuity straight and to correct a chronic misspelling of the name of a character. I also removed the chapter notes, as is my custom when I "clean" fics._

* * *

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 1: The Legend of Groose**

Groose stared up at the place where the Gate of Time used to be. The great gears had moved according to their own rhythm, existing both within and outside of Time. He missed the thing, along with Grannie, its vigilant protector. They had vanished together. Zelda said that the energies of space-time were very concentrated here because of the earlier presence of the Gate – something like that, which was why they still felt a certain kind of power in the temple hall. Groose really did have a hard time wrapping his head around everything that had happened and Zelda's status as a mortal Goddess – well, whatever she was.

Sounds of construction echoed outside. He heard Jakamar shouting orders and the thumping of a hammer. The people of Skyloft were coming down now to the Surface out of curiosity, to pursue new opportunities, or to live. Some folks divided their time more or less evenly between the Surface and Skyloft – Pipit and Karane were like this, splitting up knight-duties with bird-watching expeditions. Groose smiled thinking about when Pipit first came to the surface – the twerp had nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the little birds, much like he had - only, Pipit being the know-it-all that he was just had to know it all about the little birds. He'd even given them some scientific-sounding name, not quite accepting the name Groose had given them. As far as the red-haired boy was concerned, they would always be his little "Grooselings."

Jakamar was building small, quaint houses. The potion makers came by to research new ingredient possibilities. The fortune-teller came to see if the dreams and visions he had were accurate. Stritch divided his time between the Surface-lands and some kind of "bug paradise" island he'd found, but he was here on so many specimen-collection trips that he'd voiced that he might just move here. Groose questioned his henchman's desire for his cabin to become termite-ridden so he could study the results, but Stritch was a strange one.

Gondo the scrap-shop keeper was moving down here permanently, but did not want to live near the temple in the forest. Link had taken him, Pipit and Groose out to explore the Lanayru Desert – Pipit being interested in the birds there, of course, and Groose being interested in where dainty little Zelda had been wandering. Gondo had fallen in love with the place. There was so much scrap and lost technology for him to tinker with. When Link had shown them the Timeshift Stones, their fascination had only deepened.

Groose and found something of a kindred soul in old Gondo upon looking at the busy little robots in the portions of time that had been shifted askew. It was a bond among mechanics. Groose had taught himself to make something as wonderful as the Grooseinator. He knew he'd only brushed the surface of the things he could do.

As for Gondo's pet-robot that was functional in the present… the poor little guy hung out by the Master Sword's pedestal in the temple most the time for some reason. Gondo employed him to help haul logs and other items for people busily constructing homes and repairing the temple. The man had said something about the robot being shared between him and Link because Link had gotten the oil the robot needed, but Groose found out early on that even mentioning Link around the little bucket of bolts was a bad idea. The result was angry popping and buzzing, curses directed at a "Master Shortpants" (honestly, Groose had no idea that machines could employ such language!) and what sounded like electronic weeping for "Fi."

Yeah, that was the spirit in the sword, right? Creepy-beautiful blank-faced being…

Link and Zelda, of course, were now Surface-dwellers. Zelda had used the very last residue of the divine powers she'd inherited to seal away the Triforce within the Sacred Realm, connected to the temple. Link was still recovering, somewhat, from his battle with Demise. Though Groose was unable to see the final battle, it was obvious that Big Ugly had worked Link over pretty good. The kid was doing well considering he'd faced down the great-granddaddy of all monsters, but he still had a mild involuntary twitch from time-to-time, an unpleasant leftover from catching demonic-lightning.

"Hey, Groose!"

Groose turned around. Link and Zelda had just come through the doorway. "What are you doing in here?" Link asked, "I thought you were working on the Groosinator II."

His hauling-machine project… he'd been greasing gears with ancient flower oil this morning, but felt like taking a break in here. It was very different than the original Groosinator in that it was to be a construction-machine rather than an instrument of destruction. Groose pitied that a little, but the times were different…

The times were different…

"Relax, hotshot," Groose said, "It'll be done in no time. "Aren't you still doin' alright hauling logs with Loftwings?"

He knew very well that Loftwings did not particularly like being harnessed with tethers and made to pull logs out of the deep woods – by foot. It was the kind of work that could be done much better by some of the animals seen on the plains down here on the Surface, but they'd yet to be tamed.

"Are you looking at where the Gate stood again?" - Zelda's gentle voice.

"Yeah," Groose admitted. "I just feel the energy pulling me, ya know? Strange."

Zelda shook her head. "I know that's not why you stand here and stare at its empty place," she said. "Grannie believed in you a lot. She'd want you to move on and live your life. We all miss her, but she was happy… at the end."

"She was a real knockout in her younger days, huh?"

Zelda was taken back by Groose's response. "Y-yeah… I suppose she was."

"A guy like me could really go for a girl like that – strong … n-not that you aren't strong, I mean…"

Zelda grabbed Link by the arm and pressed close into him, laughing softly at how flustered Groose was getting. Link's face took on one of his dangerous looks. Groose, for his part, looked back to the center of the temple and got a faraway look in his eyes.

"I don't suppose either of you would understand… maybe Zelda, bein'… who you've been… but do you ever feel like you aren't in the right time? I mean, like, born in the wrong era?"

"Groose," Zelda said gently, "If this is about Impa… I don't think it would have worked out. I don't think she was into men."

Groose's eyes widened. "Do you mean she was…Don't tell me you two...?"

Zelda shook her head. "She wasn't into me, either – at least not anything more than in a spiritual devotion capacity. I don't think she's into either, Groose. She was into duty above all else."

"Well, so's Pipit but I still kinda-sorta fixed him up with Karane," Link joked.

"With Impa it's different, Link," Zelda said, "Trust me. Shiekah aren't… exactly normal."

"It's not just her," Groose said. "It's everything. The technology of the old days… I could really get my hands dirty with that stuff! And I ain't much good 'round here anymore. Cawlin and Stritch have got their own things going on, just between you an' me, I wasn't ever the best Knight Academy student – I buckled down better than ol' Lazybones here, but never had the head for the books… If I can only find a way, one of them Timeshift Stones that'll go back real far… or if I can get these hands on that other smashed-up gate in the desert… I'm not much for magic, but for mechanics… If I can pull it off, it would be alright. I don't think my parents would miss me."

Zelda separated from Link and gave a surprised Groose a big hug. Groose wasn't an orphan, but everyone who knew him knew that he might as well have been. His parents lived on some island to the west of Skyloft and besides paying for his education and buying him out of the occasional mess, they had no time or care for him. They never attended the ceremonies, never wrote. Some would say their neglect was what spawned the young man's independent nature and obsession with being strong.

"We'd miss you," Zelda said quietly. "The time-gates were powerful. It was by divine power that they were built and destroyed, but if you managed to get the Gate at the Temple of Time running again somehow, it'd likely be a one-way trip. You were born in this time, Groose. I think you are right where you belong."

As much as he enjoyed the warmth of Zelda's delicate body pressed against his rippling muscles, Groose pried loose from her. "Aw, come on. You're makin' yer boyfriend jealous and having seen how he fights, I don't wanna fight him. Kinda fond a' havin' my head attached to my body, ya know?"

Zelda laughed softly and took Link by the hand. Link was smiling. "You know, Groose," he said, "You've actually become rather gallant these last several months."

"Aw, geez…"

"We… really could use you out there… on the construction," Link added.

"Well," Groose answered, "I just wanted to come in here and have a good think is all… wonderin' about this temple, and the one out there in the desert you showed us. Interesting how the stuff in the past can look like what we'd want to create for the future, isn't it?"

* * *

"It's chronolite. A Timeshift Stone… a small one," Link said as Groose showed him the little purple pebble he'd held in the palm of his hand.

"I thought they were all…big… and rooted into the ground and stone."

"I think this is mining-waste. A stone that small won't shift a large area - only a few centimeters of circumference of where you're standing. From what I've gathered, the robots sometimes sheered off bits like that from the larger stones while they were refining them into orbs and into the Time Gates."

"The Gate of Time was made of this stuff?"

"Yeah… chronolite charged with divine power, but the Gates were very special – super-refined stone polished and assembled by master craftspeople and crafts-bots… hand-picked by the Goddess, or so Zelda tells me, and even then, to open the things, they needed to be touched by the Sacred Flames left by the original Goddesses. The smaller stones were mostly used as a power source – to generate electricity and stuff. We'll take that pebble home, I'll strike it and maybe it'll power Scrapper for a while… not that he'll appreciate it."

"So, what are we doing out here, anyway?" Groose looked up to their Loftwings, which were perched atop a high cliff just above what could only be described as a "waterfall" of sand.

"Well," Link said, twirling a new knight's sword around in the air, "If you wanted a really long glimpse into the past, I have a friend who may be able to help. And, if he isn't, well, I could use a good workout…"

"A workout?"

"My friend can see both the past and future. He can look inside your mind and re-create for you all of your most difficult challenges. I've been meaning to come back here to train with him by taking on the monsters of my past journey. All of these people are moving down here from the sky but not all of the monsters and dangers are gone… I'd like to keep in shape to protect people."

"All of the monsters I've seen around the woods have been runnin' scared once they saw I was gonna pound 'em."

Link smiled at Groose. "It seems like only the little ones are left around there."

"I'd hate to see somethin' like Big Ugly again."

"Me, too, but I can when I re-create my battles. Maybe I can ask my friend to let you join me. Battling the Imprisoned is a shared memory of ours."

"I don't see why you'd wanna fight that thing again," Groose sighed. "You've still got that twitch in your arm from his final form."

"Don't remind me. All the better reason to work out the kinks."

Link walked up to an old mining cart and struck the purple stone in its center. The area shifted swiftly from sandy low-desert to a mildly green high-desert plain. Groose squeaked and fell on his rump when he saw the great yellow dragon with the cloudy beard.

Link laughed. "This is my friend, Master Thunder Dragon."

"Ho, ho, ho! Link!" The dragon chuckled, "Have you come to test your mettle? Who is this that you have brought with you?"

"This is Groose," Link answered with a little bow, "He is interested in taking a look into the past."

"I see, I see," the dragon answered, stroking his beard. "I can sense that he was once very antagonistic to you. Do you want me to eat him?"

Groose yelped. Master Thunder Dragon laughed heartily. "That was just a joke, little one. I can give you the vision of the past you seek. Step forward if you are brave."

Groose stepped forward. Suddenly, he and Link were back at the Sealed Grounds, before the Island of the Goddess had fallen. Link was down on the ground facing off against the giant, lumbering black mass that was the Imprisoned and Groose was back on his Groosinator, a big bomb loaded and ready. By the look of Big Ugly, this was the third time it had emerged.

Groose caught a glimpse of Grannie at the temple entrance. She was smiling at him. "You can do it," she mouthed.

The fight was just as intense as it had been in reality. When he and Link had emerged from the dream-world, they were sweating and laughed in great relief at the victory.

"Phew!" Groose exclaimed, "That was something else!"

"Nothing like a narrow fight to make you feel alive!" Link added.

"Oh, I was in my element again! The Grooseinator was responding well, just magnificent! I really was… amazing… back then…"

"Groose?"

"It wasn't real, was it?"

"These bruises are. Master Thunder Dragon doesn't mess around with his challenges."

"I saw Grannie again, but she was just in my head… the whole fight… it was just a memory, wasn't it?"

"Yes and no. If you want, you can ask the dragon to set up a special challenge for you. I'm still trying to win his unbreakable shield."

"Nah," Groose said, pocketing another Timeshift Stone pebble. "Let's get on home. They're all probably gettin' worried about us."

* * *

While the construction in the woods surrounding them was going on, most people lived in tents around the Goddess statue. Groose, Link and Zelda lived in the old temple. Groose had his own place to rest that he'd kept since the days he'd helped Grannie. Link and Zelda slept in blankets at the roots of the temple's tree, in the same place they'd used when Link was recovering from being battered about by a giant sword and half-fried. It was a good thing for the kid that magnificent Groose knew where Grannie kept her medical supplies, her bandages and such.

During the depths of one night when a fall chill cut through the air, Groose sat up with an oil lamp, some paper and a quill. He looked over to the far side of the temple every once in a while to make sure his friends were still asleep. The letter wasn't going to be elegant. Cawlin was up on Skyloft right now so he couldn't tell him to lend his poetic hand to this.

Groose gathered his things and left silently, leaving the note behind, resting on his blankets.

* * *

"Gone to the desert," Link read, holding the note, his jaw a little slack. "Don't plan on coming back. Let my bird fly free 'till I call him."

"If he's doing what I think he's doing," Zelda said, "I don't think he's going to succeed at it, but he'll keep trying…"

"Should we go after him?" Link asked. "It does say right here – 'Going to the Temple of Time, gathering chrono… those stone things… I want to see if I can rebuild the Gate."

"Aw, Groose…" Zelda moaned.

"It says it just like that, too. He tried to write out 'chronolites' and crossed it out."

"I hope he'll be able to survive out there. Impa helped me cross it and you had Fi."

"He'll probably be alright as long as he's mindful of the sinksand. He won't have to use the Mining Facility back entrance like I did." Link shuddered slightly. "I didn't see any of the giant crab-monsters there last time, so I think they've mostly cleared out or gone dormant."

Zelda wandered back to a shadowed back area of the temple, one not readily apparent to any entrant. "Zelda?" Link asked.

"I just want to see if Groose was wise enough to take out any of the books this temple has on Timeshift Stones and Gates," she answered.

"Books?" Link asked, "There are books here?"

"They're in a secret area," Zelda said, "Actually, not far from where I slept through the Ages. You probably never bothered to look. Groose would know about this." She sneezed as she disturbed dust. "He spent a lot of time with Elder Impa. She loved her ancient knowledge and didn't have much to do besides being a Seal except for reading… and writing."

Link walked up behind her. "Is there anything in the library that might help us build the future?"

"I think, for that, we're to wing it. There is a book missing here… Groose is smarter than he looks."

She smiled, pointing to a gap in the small bookshelf. Link smiled.

"Oh, wait!" Zelda said, "There's a book here I haven't seen before." She wiped the dust off the spine. "It's in the old language, but I can just make it out. Huh?"

"Hmm?"

"_The Legend of Groose_."

Link clutched his belly and laughed out loud. "It looks like our friend has been doing some writing of his own! Let me guess, the full title is something like _The Legend of Groose and History's Greatest Explosions_ or _The Real True History of Grooseland_ or something like that…"

"No, just _The Legend of Groose_. This can't be his. It's in the old language, the writing used back in my days as Hylia. No one in this age knows this, save for me, now that Impa's gone… My father might know a little, but not Groose." Zelda quickly cracked open the book and leafed through the pages. "Most of this writing is worn… Some of these pages are water-damaged. This is an old book, Link, a very old book."

"Well, what does it say? The parts you can read, I mean? I don't know the old language, either…"

Zelda leafed through the book's pages quickly, her eyes darting back and forth. She'd been a speed-reader ever since Link could remember. Most people took their time reading three and four hundred page stories. Zelda could get through a book like that in a matter of hours. She was only skimming this old book, so she was done in a matter of minutes.

She closed it, and then promptly dropped it on the floor, her mouth open and eyes wide in an expression of dumbfoundedness. Link grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly. "Zelda? Zelda, speak to me. It's Link. I'm here…"

"Link I… I can't believe it."

Link gently picked up the ancient tome.

"Link," Zelda repeated, "That book… it's about Groose. Our Groose!"

"How is that possible?" Link opened the book to find an illustration that looked like an older Groose. He slammed the book shut quickly.

"He… he was a king in ancient days… adopted by a people who lived beyond the Lanayru Sea."

"Those people the Gorons tell me about…beyond the Sand Sea, they say…" Link mused, "They all have red hair and golden eyes… oh, Goddess! Sorry, sorry…"

"It's quite alright, Link," Zelda said, putting her hand over his arm. "All this means is that at some point in the future, Groose succeeds in going back in Time."

"Should we take this book to the desert and tell him?"

"No, absolutely not." Zelda took _The Legend of Groose_ and placed it back in the bookshelf. "I've had enough of disrupting the space-time continuum. Let's let Groose discover his dream on his own."

Link sighed. "I guess he will make himself useful in the future – in the past."

* * *

**END CHAPTER 1**


	2. All I Want Is You

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 2: All I Want is You**

Zelda watched Link strip down to his pants. She had stripped to undergarments and a simple gown in preparation for a long swim. Zelda had tried not to stare, but she was enjoying the view. Link's shoulders and torso had gained quite a bit of definition since the last time they'd swam together in the great pond on Skyloft. He had some hard muscle now where he used to be a skinny kid. He also had a number of small scars. Discolored patches and raised skin evidenced past injuries – and there were the veiny marks of former burns. The scars gave her a pang of sadness. It was for her that he had gained them.

It may have been more prudent to swim in just undergarments, but Zelda retained the robe in order to retrain decorum for an audience with the Water Dragon. One of the Kikwis had come to the new Hylian Settlement to announce that Faron wished to see them both as soon as possible. Zelda watched Link plunge headlong into the waters of Lake Floria and she followed suit. She grasped him by the foot as they swam together. Contact with him meant that the sacred scale he'd hung on his neck would work for the both of them. Her Grace Hylia may have been a goddess, but Zelda was quite mortal now and mortals had a difficult time holding their breath for long periods underwater without magical aids. Link steered them through fissures that bubbled up air, for even the Water Dragon's Scale did not give a person breath forever. Spinning and breaching like a leaping fish – now that's something that Zelda found strange, yet exhilarating.

She and Link climbed up on the platform where Faron waited. The dragon chuckled softly at the dripping wet duo.

"Her Grace and the Hero, I am glad you have come."

"What service do you wish of us, Great Water Dragon?" Link asked, politely bowing. "Listen, if this is about your basin… I'm still having some trouble getting that back to you. It's all the way up in Eldin, you see, and the robot-helper I was using to cart it around pretty much up and quit on me, refuses to do anything I say anymore-"

Faron held up a claw and Link was silenced. "It is not about that," she said. "I wished to see you and Her Grace in order to talk about your people."

"Our people?"

Faron gestured to Zelda. "Your Grace, I am ever your servant, but I do believe that since you have become mortal, you have gone soft."

"Soft?" Zelda asked, "Whatever do you mean?"

"You have become too sympathetic with the mortals. You are far too lenient with them. You are not ruling as you once did. I hate to be so forward with you, Your Grace, but you are not ruling as you ought."

"Ruling?"

"Ever since they've been coming down from the sky," Faron began, "Your people have been running around doing whatever they please. They are taking far too many trees from my forest, and they are not planting seed to replace them. They have been polluting the local waters with their daily chores and laundering – especially that old woman with the greasy clothes. They are building too far into the forest, too deep and they have no respect for my land."

Link spoke up, tentatively, "They are trying to build a new life here – what else are we to do if we are to restore Hylians to the Surface? I'm sure no one meant to do any harm or to violate your sensibilities."

"I rather like the fellow who's been studying the plant life," Faron mused, "And the bird-watcher. They both conduct their business very respectfully in my forest. I do not mind that innocent little girl who chases the butterflies and plays hide-and-seek with the Kikwis, but the rest… no, the rest I just do not care for."

"Surely," Zelda pleaded, "There has to be a way for us to live side-by-side."

"Rule your people, Your Grace," the dragon said, "With an iron hand if you have to. I have the respect of my Parella precisely because I rule firmly and command such respect. I expect you and the Hero to start bringing some order to your rabble very soon. If you fail to, when they wander too deeply into my domain, I will start eating them."

Link suddenly got a dangerous look in his eyes. He reached for the sword on his back that he usually carried, though it was not there. The Water Dragon roared, shaking her hall. Link and Zelda wobbled, attempting to keep their balance.

"Would you attempt to become a dragon-slayer, Hero? If I were such a fragile creature, I would not dare to even think it!"

Zelda cleaved to Link's side, as if to protect him from the dragon's wrath. Faron calmed and eased herself into a smile, then a hearty laugh. "Oh, I do not condemn you, boy. I would expect nothing less as a reaction from the world's avatar of courage. However, if you truly wish to protect your people, you will rule them, lead them…give them guidance. If they go without discipline and boundaries, they will ruin not only my domain, but also ruin themselves very quickly – for my ancient eyes have seen the ways of mortals in the deep past.

Link stepped forward. "Why do you assume that we are suited to rule?"

Faron reached down and caressed his shoulders and chin with the tips of her left claw. "It is the most simple and obvious choice. Your Zelda was Hylia, Her Grace. A former goddess is a natural ruler. Her wisdom shall be a beacon. You are the Hero. You have proven yourself strong of both body and spirit. You were well-balanced enough to use the Triforce. Yes, you are the obvious leaders."

"But I'm just -?"

Faron took her claw from him and folded her arms. "Do not underestimate yourself, Hero. I would expect more confidence from you and Her Grace."

* * *

Zelda wrung out her robe as she and Link sat in the grass beside the Great Tree, hoping the sunshine would dry them somewhat. They were alone; save for the chirping birds that alighted in the field around them and in the branches of the Tree. There was not even a Kikwi near, at least not any that were out in the open, which was fine by the two Hylians; for Zelda was embarrassed to be stripped down to a dripping gown and Link didn't particularly want to show off his bare chest to Bucha.

"This place is much nicer than the first time I saw it," Link said. "There used to be Bokoblins everywhere. There are still a few keese around – perched up in some of the high branches in the shadows… right… up there."

Zelda looked to where he was pointing and laughed. "They look pretty peaceful up there."

"The usually are, when not disturbed. They aren't really like other monsters. I've felt bad sometimes having to dispatch them. They're weak, not really worthy opponents."

"It looks like you've faced a lot of worthy ones," Zelda said sadly. She reached out and traced a long scar across Link's chest. "Oh, Link, I'm so sorry…"

Link took her by the hand. "It's okay. I would have gladly gone through it all just to have you back. It was no picnic for you, either. You almost lost your soul… If I had been… sooner…"

"Link, don't. You came out of this worse for wear than I did."

"You were hurt?"

"When my body was thrown… Groose caught it, but… I came back to it missing a couple of teeth in the back. See? Aaah!"

Zelda opened her mouth wide and tried to point it out. She then giggled a bit, "Shows I'm truly a mortal now, doesn't it? Don't worry, Link. I was too preoccupied for it to hurt any."

"I know Ghirahim hurt you," Link insisted. "You were whimpering and struggling when he was working his spell."

"You were whimpering and struggling after you came back from fighting Demise."

In the immediate aftermath, Link remembered standing upright just fine, putting Fi into her sleep and watching the Elder Impa vanish. After the heat of the battle had worn off, he'd collapsed, the full force of what he'd suffered in battle hitting him. Perhaps it was because he'd finished it and had gotten Zelda back and thus felt safe to show weakness. Groose had carried him over to the base of the temple's tree. Things were pretty vague after that, but Link remembered Zelda stroking his hair, his cheeks, and his shoulders to calm him out of his tremors.

"I guess I was," Link said. "I hope Demise didn't fry my brain too much, especially if the Water Dragon expects me to become a leader."

"You know, Link," Zelda said gently as she caressed his cheek, smiling softly at him, "I've been thinking of the prospect of creating a royal family for our people, to last through the generations. I am – or was – the Goddess, after all. A royal family should be of strong blood. I can think of no stronger blood than that of the Hero, or that of the Goddess and Hero together."

"What are you saying, Zelda?"

"Shut up and kiss me, you idiot."

Link leaned in and kissed her. She caressed his shoulders and traced the scars on his back. He gently removed her wet robe and laid her down in the grass. He looked around for stray Kikwis or wandering Skyloftians. Zelda laughed and pulled him down.

* * *

In their dry, hastily thrown-on clothes the couple wandered back to the settlement hand-in-hand.

"Father!" Zelda called out as she saw the man before the Goddess statue.

"Did you two have a good meeting with the Water Dragon?"

"Yes, we have much to talk about," Zelda answered.

"You took quite a while, and is that grass in your hair sweetheart?"

Link stood aside, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

"What's wrong with Link?" Mr. Gaepora asked.

"Nothing, nothing at all," Zelda hesitantly replied.

Link dropped to one knee. The people who were milling about and doing construction and chores around the tents stopped and stared at their Hero as he bowed low before the Knight Academy Headmaster.

"Uh… Mr. Gaepora," he shakily began, "You know how you had some rules about the fraternizing of students…"

"Ho-ho?" the old man asked.

"Well, your daughter and I… kinda… Um… I really, really, _really_ like her, sir, and…"

"Daddy, Link and I want to create a royal family for our people in this land and we already started!" Zelda blurted out.

Gaepora laughed heartily. "Hoo-hoo, hoo! Get up, dear boy. That's it, off your knees."

Link stood before him, his face nervous, and the injury-twitch in his arm acting up.

"Of course, I approve of you, Link," Zelda's father said, "You gave your all to save Zelda's life and her soul. You did more for her than her poor old father could. I have no doubt that you will give me beautiful grandchildren, Link."

To his surprise, his former Headmaster stepped forward and hugged him. The people standing around cheered and whistled. Zelda laughed her beautiful, tinkling laugh. Gaepora took Link aside, slapping him on the back. "We'll have to have a ceremony as soon as possible to celebrate and, of course, to uphold tradition. Just because this is a brave new land does not mean that we should set our traditions aside."

Link smiled shyly. "I am sorry… that we just couldn't wait."

Zelda gave him a playful slap on the upper arm. "What you mean is that I couldn't wait, silly."

"To be honest," her father said as he led them inside the Goddess' shrine to speak privately, "I thought you were already…shall we say, officially paired."

"Father!" Zelda yelped, her face red.

"Sweetheart," he replied, "I just want you to be happy. Now, about your meeting with the Water Dragon…"

* * *

Skyloft emptied out for one day as all its residents, even those that chose to keep living up on the island, came down to Faron Woods to celebrate the official wedding of Link and Zelda. The couple stood atop the Goddess statue as Mr. Horwell read some words of officiation. Normally, this was a thing that Gaepora would do, but since he was Zelda's father, it was considered more appropriate for one of the other keepers of tradition to be master of ceremonies. This joining was also a bit awkward in that it was the mortal vessel of the Goddess herself being married. As such, it was the blessing of the Old Gods that was beseeched and the focus was upon vows of love.

Zelda wore the ceremonial clothing she'd worn at the Wing Ceremony, cleaned and repaired. Link wore his green knight's uniform, also freshly mended and pressed. They spoke words of devotion to one another while clasping their hands over each other's on the hilt of Link's knight's sword. After that, they both dove off the Goddess statue's hands. Zelda clung to Link as he deployed his sailcloth. Their friends gathered to catch them as they drifted down.

This was also a ceremony to celebrate their status as rulers. While the people who remained residents of Skyloft would continue on with their own leadership, the people of the surface were to look to Link and Zelda for guidance.

"Come on now!" Link insisted as he was greeted by Fledge just before the grand feast, "It's not like we can't still be friends! I just need you to trust me…"

"Oh, I do, Link, I've always trusted you!" Fledge said. "It's just, it's gonna be kind of weird now, thinking of you as a king."

"Then, please, just keep on thinking of me as your friend." Link looked skyward and sighed, "I guess Zelda and I really were the default-leadership when everyone started coming here, but I really wouldn't have wanted this if it weren't for … keeping folks from getting eaten."

Zelda put her arms around Link's waist from behind and rested her chin on his shoulder.

"Well, you know the land better than we do," Pipit said, coming up to him with Karane and his mother. "You understand its limits and dangers better. It looks like you're the 'senior' here, along with your Goddess."

"I hope you aren't put out about that, Mr. Know-it-All."

"Not at all. I've got my own goddess."

"Pipit!" Karane giggled. She turned to Link and Zelda, "He really is too gallant, isn't he?"

"I must say," Mallara teased, "I am a little disappointed that it was a young thing that won your heart, Link."

"MOTHER!" Pipit put his palm to his forehead.

Link looked slightly serious for a moment. "I've heard things have been a little better for you."

"Well," Mallara went on with a flourish of her hand, "Since Pipit's been bringing home lots of little birds for his studies, I've had to keep the house clean so they can breathe and keep their feathers tidy. Their cute little morning songs make me happy."

"I am glad to hear it."

"Life is a river that rolls on and on," she said, moving toward the buffet table that was being set up. Pipit and Karane joined her.

"What was that about?" Zelda yawned.

"Do you remember how you, me and Pipit used to play all the time as kids?" Link asked her.

"Yeah."

"We kind of lost touch with each other's families after that, when we got into school. I didn't lose touch with your family, since your father is the Headmaster and I didn't have a family for you to lose touch with, but we didn't keep in touch much with Pipit's, did we?"

Zelda's eyes were downcast. "I think the last time I visited his home was… just after his father's funeral."

"Exactly. During my quest, I found myself at his place a couple of times at night… First place I'd wander to feeling sick and hurt after taking a sunset landing… wild remlits everywhere… Pipit hid a lot from us at school, you know? Mrs. Mallara didn't just grieve and move on… she developed a full-blown depression."

"What do you mean? She's always seemed so optimistic…"

"She had signs of it… of a chronic condition, I mean. She wasn't taking care of herself –at all. Her home, herself, or her son… I don't know if he's told Karane yet, but the reason Pipit always took up the night watch hours at the Academy is because they're strapped for rupees."

"Oh, I wish I had known! My father could have reduced his tuition or something. He'd certainly qualify for a scholarship!"

"Pipit is proud. When we've been out exploring and hunting for birds… I've… kind of been taking him to good treasure-hunting spots and letting him know Rupin's prices for particular items. He's been supplementing his income."

"Oh, that's good. Hey, who is that over there? I know there are many people from the other islands here today, but what's that guy doing with little Gully and Kukiel?"

"Ah! Here is someone you should definitely meet. That's Mr. Batreaux."

"Link!" Batreaux exclaimed, clasping his hands in his characteristic manner. "So wonderful to celebrate your mating! So wonderful to meet the lovely Zelda!"

"Hey! Hey!" Gully exclaimed, "My mom and the lady from the school cafeteria are making all the food! Hey, hey, Link! There's lots of cool bugs down here! Will you take me bug-hunting later, will ya? Will ya!"

Kukiel ran around them, her arms out like she was pretending to be a Loftwing. "Uncle Bats is watching us while the adults do adult-stuff. My mom brought her art-stuff, she wants to draw you! You should kiss for it!"

Zelda giggled and patted Kukiel on the head. "We'd like that. In a little bit, okay?"

"I'm gonna draw you, too!"

Batreaux took Zelda by the hand and kissed it. "I wish you two nothing but happiness, since Link has given me so much happiness!"

As Zelda and Link wandered off, slowly making their way to the grand table where food was newly being laid out, Zelda whispered to Link; "What is left of the Goddess in me can sense that Mr. Batreaux has a very pure soul. He is such a big man, but he is like a child."

"He used to be a monster," Link said causally. Zelda stifled a little gasp. "Literally - a monster. He wanted to become a human, so I enacted a spell for him. He is seeing the world through new eyes, so he is very much like a child, newborn into the world."

"Oh, that is amazing, Link! While it is very easy for men to become monsters, it is almost unheard of for monsters to become men."

As they approached the table, Link spared a glance for Peatrice, who was being chatted-up by Cawlin. Stritch appeared to be trying to explain something scientific to Orielle while her brother was having a slow-dance with one of the senior Skyloft Knights. Kina was singing as another knight played a round-shaped flute. Fledge showed off his arm-muscles to Keet while the old man that hung out at the Lumpy Pumpkin with him all the time laughed.

One end of the buffet-table sagged with the offerings laid out for the Goron guests – glistening stones, wafer-thin slate and something they called "rock sirloin." The human side of the table was laden with many recipes made with pumpkin, including Mr. Pumm's famous pumpkin soup. At center was a roasted terrestrial animal that had become a new favorite food for the people of Skyloft that had come to or made regular visits to the surface. The historical texts had called it a "pig." They lived wild in the woods and, while not particularly easy to hunt, fell to well-shot arrows. There were many fruits and vegetables, both from Skyloft and the Surface, and there were small, roasted birds that the Mogmas insisted the people try – they called them "cucoos." The Skyloftians were, however, reluctant to eat the flesh of birds, even small, stupid, bad-tempered ones.

Link was brave enough to give it a go and found that he rather liked the taste of cucoo. He believed in exploring all of the native foods (save Goron-cuisine, to avoid the tooth-damage), because people would need to know what they could eat to survive.

As he and Zelda were plating up food for each other, Karane came storming by. "That fortune teller!" she huffed. "Pipit and I asked him for a reading and he told us our future together was 'clouded.' The nerve!"

Link laughed. "Oh, you can't rely on Sparrot. Even when his visions are correct, they're rather vague and he tends to tell you things you already know."

"But I know Pipit and I are right for each other! Don't you agree?"

"Wholeheartedly," Link said with a smile. "You remember the way he charged in when he thought Cawlin was about to win you with his letter. He was desperate for you! You don't have to worry about me or Zelda stealing him away from you now."

"Wait, what, YOU?"

Link rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "I suppose it was more of a hero-worship than anything, but I had kind of a crush on him when I was younger."

"Is that possible?" Karane said in puzzlement.

"One can question what one wants for a while," Link said as he turned to his bride. "All I want is Zelda now, though."

"Maybe we should get our fortune told," Zelda said cheerily. "I'm sure he doesn't have nearly the intuition of a goddess, but… it'll be fun!"

After they set their plates down at a table, Zelda dragged Link over to where Sparrot sat and asked for a fortune.

"Oooh!" the fat-faced man said, "My big, lovely eyes behold a grand future for the two of you! You shall be the roots of the mightiest of kingdoms. I see much hardship on the horizon, I'm afraid, but if you persevere, it will work out. Good luck, you two!"

The newly joined monarchs of the reborn Realm of Hylia spent the rest of the day eating and dancing and enjoying the love of their friends.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 2 **


	3. Fly, Free Bird

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 3: Fly, Free Bird**

"Ugh! Is this tea or hot leaf juice?" Karane wretched as she set her teacup down, nearly spilling its contents in haste to part it from her lips.

Zelda softly laughed. "Mr. Owlan said that this kind of leaf, brewed as tea would help ease my aches and be good for the baby."

"You need to brew it better… let it steep lightly, in very hot water. That should improve the taste… if it can be improved upon."

"Well, you were always the tea-expert. We'll let him be the judge." Zelda lightly patted her slightly swollen belly. She was only beginning to show. Karane and Pipit had arrived yesterday at the cabin she shared with Link. People had begun work on a stone and brickwork building that was to become a governmental center. Link and Zelda had insisted that they did not actually need a palace to live in, but such a place would come into use in the future when the population grew and a council and offices would be needed to govern the land. Zelda expected the budding castle – and the need for it – to be ready in her children's time. As it was, she and Link had been effective in scaling back the taking of timber and in orchestrating a re-routing of some of Faron Woods' water for irrigation and general use in the settlement. There was the rain-collection system to supplement it.

"Are you sure it's a boy?"

"I'm sure."

"Have you got a name yet?"

"Not yet." She looked over to Link, asleep in a chair on the other end of the dining room table. "Wake up, Sleepyhead. It's almost time for you to go."

"She's right," Pipit said as he nudged Link awake. He sat next to the less-than-regal King of Hyrule (the name that the land had been dubbed of late). Link snorted and apologized.

Pipit had a book open before him. He'd been penciling in little notes, based on his memories. He and Karane had been up in Skyloft all winter, for Faron Woods had been choked with cold and snow and Pipit had just finished his official graduation and induction into the Skyloft Knights, so he'd been busy with work. He'd just been given some vacation time and since he'd heard of the thaw, had decided to try to find the elusive "eagles" the Kikwis had told him about the last time he'd made landfall.

He'd been naming the birds of the Surface after what the Kikwis called them and had been recording what he hoped would become a comprehensive guide to the _Birds of the Surface_. The Kikwis, themselves, were a part of Pipit's book because, though flightless, they were a kind of bird – at least according to certain classifications of physiology. Pipit was more comfortable classifying their kind as "planimal" to denote them as a plant / animal hybridization.

Pipit had found that the Kikwis' ancient names for the many Surface-birds were similar to the names of people in Skyloft. He'd found "sparrows" and "parrots," "oriels" and "wrens"…

"What's that one?" Link asked, pointing to a drawing. Karane had been doing most of the drawing-work for this book, for she had an artistic hand. Pipit concentrated upon the writing and scientific aspects.

"Well, that's a pipit," Pipit said brightly.

Link laughed so hard he snorted. "Don't tell me you've gone Groose on me! You're naming them after yourself now?"

"No, no, no!" Pipit said, holding up his hands and shaking his head. "That's what the Kikwis call that kind of bird. Trust me; I was as surprised as anyone. It's not a bad bird to name after myself, though."

Link read another page. "_Groosia rose_, _groosia azure_…"

"The 'grooselings.' They're the same species, various colorations. I decided to give Groose his way, after all."

"Listen," Link said, "You've been keeping up with your sword training, right?"

"Me and Karane both. There may not be any monsters on Skyloft anymore, but a knight's gotta keep sharp."

"Good to hear," Link answered. "Because there are a few monsters still lurking around down here. You said you wanted to go out by the Ancient Cistern. That place is mostly sealed up, but it does house some undead – Cursed Bokoblins and Stalfos… those things don't need a master to keep on fighting, since they're pretty much just magic-animated corpses. I'm always checking that area when I get the chance. There have been… a few escapes. Faron gets most of them, but she doesn't like rotten meat so she's a little lax on security there."

"What's their threat-level?" Pipit asked.

"The dead Bokoblins not very much. They just kind of latch onto you, a bit like Chu-Chus but a lot more disgusting. The Stalfos are infinitely more dangerous. They are skeletal warriors who used to be knights in an ancient age and they… never gave up their will to fight, even in death."

"Oh, that's awful!" Karane proclaimed. "I hope none of them were Skyloft Knights."

"I don't think so," Link said with a shake of his head, "I think they fought in the ancient Surface-war. They're probably the remains of ancient demons or may even have been human traitors who worked with the ancient demons and thus were cursed. I don't know for sure, but that's what I think. Anyway, if we run into any… I doubt we will, Go for the back. Slice for the vertebrae and the ribs. That will sever the back and send them toppling."

"Are you sure you're going to be alright out there?" Zelda implored.

"There are three of us and we all have swords," Link said. "I think we'll be just fine if any trouble arises."

Pipit packed up his book and pens and slung his sword across his back. Karane slung a bag with water-filled bottles over her shoulder, over her sword. Link picked up his sword and Divine Shield and the three headed out. They walked through the Hylian Settlement, greeting the people at their shops and doing their daily errands. Link scrambled up a shortcut, climbing a fallen log. He reached down and helped his friends up. They found another rise like this and scrambled up.

"Well, here it is, the Ancient Cistern," Link said, pointing across quiet waters to the ancient ruins of the entranceway.

Pipit was shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand. "Up there," he said… "Do you see it?"

Link and Karane looked skyward to see an arching shape. It was a bird of some size – not quite as big as a Loftwing, but larger than most of the other Surface birds.

"I think the nesting area is somewhere up there, over that rise," Pipit said. "Is there any way to get up there, Link?"

Link scratched his chin and took a pair of strange claw-like devices out of his traveling pouch. He fitted them onto his hands. "I… I don't know how much weight these can carry or how exactly this is going to work since I've always used these alone, but if both of you will grab onto me, I think I can pull us up."

It was a very awkward group-hug. Pipit grabbed onto Link's shoulders while Karane wrapped her arms around his waist. The trio rocketed up to an earthen ledge and fell down together in a heap.

"We are Not. Doing. That. Again." Pipit commanded as he fitted his hat back into place.

"We should have taken turns with the Clawshots, I guess," Link said, "But they were a gift to me from one of the Old Goddesses. I don't know if they're meant for anyone but me to use."

They hiked on, looking at the scenery and moving as silently as they could, listening to the calls of common birds, trying to pick out the screech of eagles. A shadow behind a tree moved. Link narrowed his eyes. He drew his sword and shield off his back. Pipit and Karane tentatively drew their swords as well.

"What is it, Link?" Karane asked.

Suddenly, a creature leapt out at them, screaming a high-pitched, dust-dry scream. It thrust out its arms, each holding swords. It was a skeleton with four arms.

"Stay back!" Link shouted. "It's a Stalmaster! This is a very dangerous enemy!" His face was white with fear. He danced and dodged and drew the undead knight's attention. He grumbled under his breath, "I thought I'd taken care of you already…"

Pipit grabbed a bottle out of Karane's shoulder-bag. It was filled with red potion, the only bottle of the stuff they had, just in case. They would have carried more if they thought the journey was going to be this eventful.

"Link said to go for the spine, right?" Karane asked.

One of the great swords hit Link, knocking him to the ground. Karane slammed her sword into the skeleton's spinal column where the ribs joined what would have been the belly if it was a living man. Link got himself up and Pipit tossed him the red potion, which he drank down, stemming the tide of blood that was running off the side of his scalp. Pipit sliced off one of their attacker's lower ribs. Link thrust the tip of his blade into its sternum.

The monster stalked toward Link, its four arms and four swords folded together. It unleashed its blades in a multi-directional sweep, which Link just barely blocked with his shield. Karane swung and missed as the Stalmaster moved. Link wheeled around only to find himself being tackled by Pipit who simultaneously pushed him out of the way, dealt a devastating blow to the center of the monster's spine and took a hit from one of its descending blades. The yellow-clad knight was sent wheeling to the ground.

Karane jumped up with a war-cry and sent her blade square into the back of the skeleton's skull. It cracked and broke and the monster fell clattering to the ground. It turned to smoke and dust, leaving nothing behind it but the rupees that had been in its belt-pocket and unique sour and sickening smell of charred bone. "Pipit!" she cried.

The bloody heap that was Pipit tried to pull himself up. He uttered an animal-like squall of pain. Link dropped his sword and crouched down beside him, holding him up and positioning him on his knees.

"Ah! Aie!" Pipit yelped.

Link's eyes quickly scanned him as Karane fished around in her bottle bag. "We're all out of potion," she said, "We only had the one… All I've got is water."

"Pass it here." Link took a bottle of water and put it to his friend's lips. Pipit sipped in a little before he accidentally made a sharp movement and sucked in air through his teeth. Link held him down while lifting his shoulders up.

"Karane," Link instructed calmly, "Fish around in my belt-pouch. Take the Clawshots and go get help."

Karane nodded. "Understood," she said.

"We won?" Pipit asked.

"Yeah, your girlfriend finished it. Split the damned thing's skull. Remind me never to get into a fight with her. She's dangerous."

Pipit laughed softly, then winced, then moved, and then winced some more. "Oh, Goddess, Link, how bad is it?"

"I don't think you want to know."

Pipit gave him an intense look. "I prefer honestly. Please."

Link hesitated. "I'm holding you up with one arm… my other hand is kind of… keeping your insides inside you."

"So it's worse than it feels."

"Believe it or not, I've survived injures like this. With the right potion… Your side's gonna hurt for a while, but you're going to be alright. Karane's getting help. You'll have a story to tell your kids."

"Link?"

Pipit's eyes were getting glassy. Not a good sign. Link shouted into the forest. "Are there any fairies around here? I could sure use your help! Come on out! Please!" Tears were streaming down his face at this point. He tried to stifle them to keep Pipit calm, but they wouldn't stop. "You like helping heroes, don't you? He's a hero, too! Please, if you're out there – show yourselves!"

"Link… tell my mom I'm sorry, okay? After dad left, mom was just never the same. I was supposed to be the man of the house… I was supposed to take care of her…"

"You can still take care of her. Stay with me, Pipit."

"You know, it really doesn't hurt anymore."

"Where are you?" Link shouted into the still morning air. A couple of grooselings were disturbed from the grass and flew off. "What's taking them so long?"

"Get a hold of yourself, Link," Pipit said calmly. The young man couldn't feel his extremities anymore and he was feeling mostly tired. There was a nagging ache in his middle. It didn't hurt as much as it had at first; it was more like a bite without power now. He wondered, briefly, how long he'd have to stay in bed if he survived this, and how long he'd have to use a cane or a crutch. He couldn't do swordplay or ride a bird like this, and it was going to be a good long time before he could continue his work down here. He'd fight hard to recover. He had to finish his work. His mom needed him and so did Karane.

Despite the numbness, he was certain he felt warmth on his right hand. Someone was grasping it. Karane was back. Up in the sky were a pair of circling Loftwings high above them, just below the great cloud layer. Pipit couldn't tell whose they were. If one of them was his, it wasn't in range for him to sense it in his soul.

"They're so… free up there," he whispered.

"Stay with me, darling," Karane pleaded. His hand went limp in hers. Link felt Pipit's entire body go slack. The wounded boy gazed skyward, his eyes half-lidded and still.

Zelda vaulted up onto the rise using the Clawshots. She tossed them down to her father below and came running as fast as her round middle and aching ankles would allow her. Karane immediately scooted out of the way to allow Zelda access to the patient. Zelda put both of her hands gently over Pipit's chest and she looked like she was trying to sense something – like she was doing something of a Goddess-nature.

She shook her head, and then ran her hand over Pipit's eyes to close them. "I…I'm sorry," she choked. "Even when I was Goddess, the Old Gods had limits on my power. I can sense that his soul is gone. He's….he has moved on…Just moved on."

"Is everything alright up there?" Gaepora shouted. He was answered by Karane, who broke out in a piercing wail.

Link held the body close as if he could will the life back into it, letting his tears fall silently. He picked up Pipit and started walking off into the forest. Karane chased after him while Zelda stayed behind to talk to her father.

"What are you doing?" Karane demanded.

"I need to clean him up," Link said in a hoarse whisper. "We're going to have to take him back to Skyloft… for his mother… and I know he'd want a Sky Burial."

"I'm coming with you," Karane said numbly.

"Link, you don't have to." Gaepora's voice. He and Zelda were behind them. "This is the kind of thing that I am to be in charge of. It's never easy." He shook his head. "I never thought I'd have to do ceremony for a knight so young."

"There's a pond near here with a clean waterfall," Link said. He winced. "He's still dripping blood…"

* * *

Twilight fell on the Hylian Settlement. The lanterns hung on the houses wore dimming-shades and none of the usual music of the shops played. Pipit lay in state on a cot inside the Goddess Shrine, before the bejeweled map of the Surface, his sheathed sword over him. He didn't look peaceful so much as simply dead. Two pairs of the newly appointed Surface Knights guarded the back side of the building and the entranceway. They each wore a black Lofwing feather in their hats as a symbol of mourning.

Zelda milled outside the shrine, walking and talking with Karane in the evening air.

"You were the Goddess…right?" Karane asked. "You should know where people – their spirits, I mean - go when they die?"

"Yes and no," Zelda said. "I am a mortal now… my memories from that other life are not complete and even then, I remember my powers being limited. I couldn't use the Triforce that I protected, I was under the auspices of Din, Nayru and Farore, I could be wounded and was by Demise, and I didn't meddle in the lives of my people too much – I wanted them to figure things out for themselves."

"That sounds like it might be for the best, actually. If you're doing things right, people won't be sure you're doing anything at all."

Zelda looked at the rising crescent moon as it just peeked out from behind the treetops. It didn't look any more distant down here than it did in Skyloft. "I remember…" she winced, "I remember… the death of the Ancient Hero. I held him and swore that his spirit would be reborn. Then I set up plans that ruined that reborn-Hero's life."

"I wouldn't say that… you're talking about Link, right? He moved Heaven and Earth for you… I'm sure he'd do it again. You shouldn't blame the Goddess for choosing the right man to save the world."

"I don't like past-me," Zelda spat.

"Well, you're you now," Karane offered. She let a tear silently fall. Zelda's eyes were red from crying, too. Both of their voices were scratchy and strained.

"Sometimes people are reborn," Zelda said softly. "Sometimes, it's as their own species, sometimes as another. Knowing Pipit, he may become a Loftwing. Usually, people go into the spiritual realm. Link has been there as part of his spiritual testing as the Hero, but he did not go to any part of it that other souls go to. Occasionally, if their business is unfinished, they remain as a ghost. Sometimes accursed and wicked men become undead creatures and sometimes monsters do not get rest. Every once in a while, very seldom, a soul will just dissolve, as in, a diffusion into nothingness, unawareness and a kind of sleep, but that only seems to happen to people who really, truly want it or people consumed by sufficiently powerfully evil, as I almost was."

"What do you think has happened to Pipit?"

"I don't know for sure," Zelda said. "I think he's destined for rebirth. That's kind of how he 'felt' to me when I touched his newly emptied body. I can tell you that he felt free."

"He won't really be the same if he comes back…"

"That's right. Each life is its own." Zelda took Karane by the hands. "We will remember him – his life, this life, Pipit as Pipit, and honor him."

Zelda and Karane hugged and wept anew. Zelda rubbed her friend's back. "We will keep him in highest honor on the Surface. After all, he saved Link's life today."

"Where is Link?" Karane ventured to ask. "After… after everything, he just kind of went off back the way we'd come… he didn't even clean himself up…"

Zelda sighed. "Link is… best left alone right now. He gets…dangerous… when he's upset."

"Not to you, I hope?"

"No… not to people – not to those he cares about, but he's still best left alone when he wants to be alone."

Just then, Link came staggering back into the outskirts of the settlement. He dragged his sword behind him and walked with a limp.

"Link!" both Zelda and Karane cried, running up to him. His hair was matted with blood and indiscernible goo. His tunic was ripped down to the chainmail and his pants were torn. There were blood spats of many colors – the red-brown of dried human blood, the brighter red of fresh human blood, the black, green and purple of various kinds of monster blood including what appeared to be a rotted black-brown ichors that gave Link an evil reek. He had some scrapes, cuts and other wounds on his arms and a sizable bruise on his left cheek.

Link struck his sword into the ground and used it almost as a crutch. "Won't be…monsters in the woods for a while," he wheezed. "Went into the Cistern and cleared it out. All of it…"

"Link…" Zelda whispered. "Easy."

"Kinda like fightin' that horde Ghirahim sent after me all over again… Won't be anything killing my friends anymore…"

"Link… let's get you inside… Get you cleaned, get you treated, okay?"

Link nodded, willing to obey his Zelda.

"I'll come," Karane said. Then she choked, "After all, we were… we were staying with you… and… Pipit wouldn't want you dying right after him!"

* * *

**END CHAPTER 3. **


	4. Straighten Up and Fly Right

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 4: Straighten Up and Fly Right**

Just as Skyloft had emptied out to visit the Surface for Link and Zelda's wedding, the Surface Hylian Settlement had emptied out into Skyloft for Pipit's funeral. He was well-liked and even those that did not know him as anything other than a random Academy student milled about for the ceremony, for Skyloft was a tight-knit community that felt every loss.

A wooden scaffold was built upon the upper level of the Academy property and Pipit's body, dressed in fresh chainmail and a clean uniform was placed upon it along with many flowers. In the past, pyres such as these were erected on the Goddess' Island, but now that the landmass was a part of the Surface, this was judged the best spot. After all the speeches had been made, Sir Eagus would raise the special bird-call and, if tradition went as it was supposed to, Pipit's Loftwing would come to take him away in its claws. Bereft Loftwings were never seen again after they'd taken their masters away. It was thought that the brokenhearted birds took their dead masters to a fabled sky-island where they, themselves went to die – so bird and rider could be together forever.

Wryna and Jakamar escorted Mallara. Link started to speak with her but couldn't get any words out. He could not meet her gaze. She stared ahead, seldom blinking, her expression blank. She'd been catatonic like this ever since the Headmaster had given her the bad news. It had been clear that she had been weeping bitterly, but for now, she could do nothing but stare at the scaffold, or to stare ahead blankly when anyone tried to address her.

Zelda talked with her father while Link wandered the grounds, occasionally met people to share condolences, but mostly, he'd keep to himself, listening to snatches of conversation.

"He was a double-clutching, back-biting, girlfriend-stealing bastard!" - Cawlin. Link's skin crawled. The little jerk was talking to Stritch.

"Listen up, dipwads!" – Groose. Groose had come, taking a break from his desert-work. He sidled up to his former henchmen. "Cram a sock in it right now! If I hear you say one more bad thing, I'll put _you_ on a pyre, pounded flat!"

"My, my, Groose," Stritch commented, "I don't recall you liking the guy much, either… why put up the defenses now?"

"It's called respect, dammit!" Groose growled.

"He was a girlfriend-stealing bastard," Cawlin said, "But it's not like I wanted him to die."

"What did I just say?"

"Come now, Groose. What is less respectful? A few honest words or causing a fight at a funeral?"

"Seriously. Shut. Up."

Link knew that he shouldn't expect model behavior of Groose's former lackeys. He was surprised to see such defensiveness from Groose. Groose had spent a lot of time either getting reported by Pipit for one dumb thing or another he was doing or unsuccessfully trying to bully the upperclassman. Link remembered one time when they'd gotten into an argument about Groose teasing Fledge and Groose had decked Pipit, giving him a black eye. Pipit had just stood up, brushed himself off and gave Groose his infamous death-glare. Pipit had not raised a fist; he'd just glared at the more robustly-built boy, silently daring him to try it again. Then Zelda showed up fussing and Groose had backed right down.

Pipit never used violence to solve anything among his fellow students. He used his forceful glare, his forceful voice and sometimes, arguments of pure logic to keep order. It seemed like everyone knew that he could effectively use violence if he'd wanted to – he was Eagus' best swordsmanship student, even better than Link was before Link had discovered the surface and had gained superior skills through sheer necessity. Pipit would never harm an Academy student, even someone like Cawlin or Groose, because he was very self-controlled. He'd once told Link that he hated dealing with the remlits at night while on patrol because they were such tame animals in the daytime and utterly pathetic with their whining and whimpering when he'd had no choice but to whack one with the flat of his blade. Link suspected that he'd thought of Groose and his henchmen in a similar manner – unworthy adversaries.

Link winced. He passed by Karane, who was crying into Oreille's shoulder. He then passed by Fledge, who was with Instructor Owlan, sniffling and trying to hide it. He also seemed to be looking around nervously, as if wanting to avoid someone in the milling crowds, hoping that they were not about to approach him.

"It is not a weakness to cry," the teacher told the boy. "At times like these, showing emotion is strength."

"If you say so," Fledge gulped. "Pipit was… he was a good senior… He watched out for me a lot… and Link, too."

Link grit his teeth hard at that. He kept replaying the events of the day before last over and over again in his mind. Pipit had known what he was doing and had taken the blow for him. He probably didn't think it was going to kill him – he'd swept in there, hoping to deal a fatal strike on the Stalmaster and duck the sword, only the sword had been too fast for him. It had been an adrenaline-rush reaction – Pipit had seen his underclassman in danger and reacted as he always had in his duties as a good senior and friend. It didn't matter that he'd just graduated and had been inducted as a career-knight, nor did it matter that Link never would because he was King of the Surface now. Just because their ranks had changed did not mean their relationship had. Today, Link felt neither regal nor royal. He felt, most of all, like a failed friend – not an active betrayer, but still a failure.

He saw Gondo with Scrapper floating beside him. Gondo, too, had come in from the desert. Link and Gaepora had agreed to give Pipit's chainmail shirt to the mechanic-smith, the gashed one that the young man had died in, so that he could study it for ways to improve the chainmail for the Surface Knights if not the Skyloft Knights as well. The man had said something about how heavier armor might make flight difficult, which wouldn't be a problem for the Surface, but would be for the Sky.

"Zzzrt. What's wrong with Master Shortpants? Drrzt." Scrapper asked. "One of your kind has ceased functioning. It is not like you have not started making more. Bzzt."

"SCRAPPER!" Gondo yelped, "That is neither kind nor polite! I have already explained protocol to you."

"I just don't understand. Rrzzzt." Scrapper said with a spin, "When we robots lose one of our own, we keep on working. Vrrm. You humans stop everything like the world's ended. Master Shortpants' friend was just a human like any other. Drzzt."

Link glared at him. "And Fi was just a sword."

As he walked away, Link could hear Scrapper buzzing and popping in rage. Gondo was shouting, trying to calm the little bucket of bolts down. Link immediately felt terrible. It was a cruel thing to say and it had hurt him, as well. He missed Fi. He knew no other way to convey the human experience to Scrapper. It was, perhaps, particularly low, since Link did not mourn for Fi the same way he was mourning Pipit. Fi had been a good companion on his great quest, but the quest was exactly what she had lived for. Link knew that she felt – for as much as a single-program sword-intelligence could feel – "completed" when the mission had ended. She had gone into her sleep-mode "happy." Pipit, on the other hand, had everything to live for. He'd just achieved his dream of becoming an official Skyloft Knight, he had a fierce and pretty lover, and he had meaningful work to do.

With a shout from Eagus, the ceremony began. He presided over it. Headmaster Gaepora had overseen some of the more personal aspects of this - such as informing family of the loss, while Eagus presided over speeches for fallen knights. Zelda came up to Link and hugged him from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder.

"We are here today to honor Sir Pipit, son of Peregrin, passed before him, and Mallara, who remains…" Eagus droned.

"Sir." This was not a posthumous title. Pipit had been enjoying it during the winter, after a fall graduation and had been a working Rescue Knight before his last visit to the Surface. Two people whose lives he'd saved came forward to speak, as well as the Headmaster. Mallara had tried to speak, but just broke down crying and asking the Heavens for her son back.

Link and Zelda came up last. Link spoke seriously, almost in monotone.

"His last words…" Link choked out, "He felt… free. I… I am so, so sorry…" He stepped down, allowing Zelda to play her harp and sing.

After that, Sir Eagus raised a cylindrical device which he spun rapidly in the air. It created a sharp, distinct whistling sound.

A shadow fell over the gathered as a great yellow Loftwing descended. Everyone stared as it swooped down and took the body on the pyre up in its talons, gingerly. The bird flapped and soared off. The wind of its wings blew over everyone. A scrap of mustard-yellow cloth fell by Link's feet. Link picked up the hat and folded it carefully. His eyes scanned the sky to watch Pipit's bird soar off into the distance and vanish behind misty clouds.

* * *

Link joined Karane later at Pipit's house. Mallara had been taken to Jakamar, Wryna's and Kukiel's place to stay with them for a while.

"Thank you for your help, Link," Karane sniffled. Link looked around the house. It was much cleaner than the last time he'd visited and it was filled with little metal and wicker cages all containing tiny birds. There was a pair of cardinals, a male and a female. There were sparrows and a blue jay, a quail and a dove. There was even a lone dark guay in a round metal cage that gave Link a baleful glare. Link wondered where Pipit had gotten all these cages – perhaps Gondo had been constructing them for him, paid in some of the Surface treasures he'd helped Pipit to find.

"Ms. Mallara isn't going to be able to take care of them anymore, and has no reason to. I want to take them back down to the Surface to free them. It's what Pipit would want."

"I'm sure," Link said. "He was probably planning to free them after he'd finished studying them up close, anyway." He started helping Karane take cages down from the ceiling and walls. "I hope they'll do alright on the trip home. My bird's carried a lot of strange things, but never a load like this before."

"I think we can manage to take half each, or maybe even divide the load into a third if Zelda will take a few cages," Karane answered, "These birds are all from the Faron Woods area. We never trapped any from the desert and the only avian-life we found in the volcano area were these large carrion-birds and we didn't want to take any of them because they would be hard to feed… rotten meat and all. Hey! Edgar! Behave!"

Link was holding the cage with the guay and the bird was squawking at him, flapping around and scratching at the bars. "Edgar?" he asked.

"Pipit gave a few of them names," Karane explained. "Edgar just felt right for that one, he told me."

"I'm surprised he took a guay," Link said. "They're kind of evil… less a normal animal and more a low-level monster."

"A bird's a bird," Karane shrugged. "He'd eat right out of Pipit's hand. The thing always tried to bite me."

"He was always good at calming down Loftwings…" Link smiled. "Do you have any idea what you'll be doing now?"

"Well," Karane said sadly, "First, I'm going to continue on the course I was on. I am going to study hard, graduate and earn my knighthood. Then, I think I am going to move down to the Settlement and put my bid in to become a Surface Knight. I am also going to continue Pipit's work. I want to finish the book about the birds of the Surface."

Link took Pipit's hat out of his pocket and laid it, folded, upon a counter. He unbuckled a silver and gold rupee-filled wallet from his belt and laid it atop it. He found a quill and paper and quickly scribbled a note.

"What are you writing?" Karane asked.

"A note," Link said. "It's an invitation to Mallara to join the royal court down on the surface if she wishes to. Zelda and I will take care of her if she wishes to live down there with us."

"I think she's going to be staying with Jakamar's family for a long time," Karane responded. "I think she's more comfortable with them. Even if they move back down to their Surface property, I imagine she'll be with them."

"Alright," Link said. "Let's load up so we can go down and free these captives."

* * *

Late that afternoon, when the sun was beginning to fall in the woods outside the Hylian Settlement, Link, Zelda and Karane opened the latches on the doors of cages and let many little birds free to find their own fortunes.

* * *

The next morning, Zelda awoke to the sounds of clashing steel. Link's place on their bed was empty, the blankets left messy and a dent left on his pillow. She put on her robe and slippers and rushed outside to find Link slamming his sword over and over again against the big boulder outside the back of their cabin.

"Heeya! Hiya! Yaaaa!" he screamed. He was not practicing his swordsmanship. This was sloppy. If he was seriously practicing his sword-techniques, he'd not be using a stone as a target nor would he be using his sword as one would use a hammer. She saw the sweat pouring down his face and dipped a small bottle into a bucket of rainwater.

"Link!" Zelda called. "Easy! Whatever you're doing… You're going to…break…it…"

Zelda jumped out of the way as half a sword came spinning through the air to embed itself into a nearby tree. Link stood with the hilt in his hand, puffing and panting.

"Here…" Zelda said gently, proffering the water. "What in the world has gotten into you?"

Link appeared to calm down. He took the bottle of water, then got a dark look in his eyes, winced, and threw it against the boulder, shattering it.

"Link! What is wrong?" Zelda pleaded, grasping him by the shoulders. "You'd better tell me what's going on in that green-capped head of yours right now!"

Link sat down heavily on a log and caught his breath. "Water…" he gasped.

"Yes…?" Zelda said gently, sitting beside him. She rubbed his back. "I can get another bottle."

"No," Link whispered, his voice hoarse. He looked up, his eyes distant for a moment. "Water… all Karane and I had was water. We had a red potion, but I used it as soon as I got hurt. If we'd saved it… maybe… maybe Pipit would still be with us…"

"Oh, Link…" Zelda gasped, hugging him from behind. "Ssh. What's happened has happened, not even the Timeshift Stones can change it. Besides, if you hadn't taken the potion, maybe I'd be missing you."

Link calmed a bit, relaxing in her arms. "I don't think I'm cut out to be a king, Zelda," he confessed.

"Why ever not?" Zelda retorted, "I chose you, didn't I? As Hylia and as myself!"

"Everything's so haphazard in this colony, anyway," Link sighed. "We're letting the Skyloft Knight Academy train the knights for here… people only listen to us about the illegal logging because they're afraid of the Water Dragon… and, Zelda… I…" Link winced, "I was able to see to myself down here just fine, but how am I supposed to protect all of these people? Pipit was strong… he was… the last person I'd expect to become a first casualty. I couldn't protect him, Zelda."

"It was… just bad luck," Zelda soothed. "And a choice, if what Karane and you tell me is accurate. He saw the blade coming before you did and wanted to protect you."

"It's not supposed to be that way, though," Link said bitterly as he looked off over the roofs of new houses to the trees beyond them. "A good king is supposed to protect his people."

* * *

Link awoke again in the middle of the night gasping for breath – for the fifth night this week. All his life he'd been a hardcore sleeper, and lately he'd become an insomniac. He whispered a spell to ignite the house-torches.

While Skyloft had made use of certain kinds of technology – mostly wind-generators - to produce electricity and heat, the Surface relied upon basic means and the magical forces of the land. Some of the Hylian Settlement was powered by electrical generators fed by steam and chemical combustion, but most people had taken up the use of magical means to replace purely human technologies. Link wondered if the future would bring more of that. They were already living atop the remains of long-lost and long-forgotten technologies a few of them were only beginning to understand (and most of them remained baffling).

Link looked down at his hands, relieved that there was no blood there. That had been his recurring nightmare – his hands sticky and slick with human blood, the unique smell of fresh innards tickling his nose. He glanced over at his wife, deep in slumber, thankful that he'd not disturbed her. Then again, Zelda had slept for just about a thousand years in an amber chrysalis, so she'd officially outranked him now as the world's most hardcore sleeper. Link whispered and willed a minor wind-spell to put the torches out. He settled back in and tried to enjoy the warmth of his blankets and the sensation of gentle breath tickling the back of his neck.

The twilight of drowsiness gave way to a world. Link stood under a dark blue-gray sky, shifting to black and to silver. He was in a Skyloft that looked like it was resting beneath a light, gentle blanket of snow. A few flakes drifted down from the sky. A soft music played on the wind. Everything was silver and white and emanated a diffused glow. Link recognized where he was. This was the Silent Realm – specifically, the Goddess' Silent Realm that he'd had his final spiritual trial in.

He quickly looked about himself. He was not standing within the Gate, but the sky remained calm. There were no sacred tears to be seen, and likewise, no guardians or watchers. Link looked down at himself and noticed that he was in his uniform, but without sword or shield. He also glowed in waves of light that moved over his body – or was it his spirit? He wandered around in the quiet land, devoid of people or animals.

Link came to one of the docks and alerted by a sharp "Wark!" sound, glanced skyward to see a descending Lofting. The bird landed before him and it was a Loftwing like no other he'd seen. Its wings and tail had white sections – like most Loftwings, but their tips were capped in shining metallic gold. The body-feathers of the bird were silver – metallic, glowing silver. The animal's eyes were a deep and startling blue.

Link reached out to touch the creature. It responded to him with a loud "Wark!" It nodded to him, then stalked over to the edge of the dock and flew off. Link blinked for a few minutes. "Does it want me to follow it?" He ran off the platform and whistled for his bird. To his surprise, his crimson terror existed in this strange world and caught him without fail. The bird's body glowed like Link's did – a sign that unlike the solid silver Loftwing, they were strangers here, beings that did not normally belong in this realm.

The silver Loftwing swooped alongside Link, doing a dive and spin. Link's bird did likewise and Link held on tight. Link laughed, enjoying the ride. This was like many a race he'd had with friends while up in Skyloft. He used to have chases with Fledge, Pipit, Karane and Zelda all the time.

Link showed off the recently learned spin-attack move and to his surprise, the wild Loftwing followed suit. A wind kicked up and Link felt his hands slip off his riding-belt as his bird shifted sideways. He did what he was trained to do in this situation – he dug his knees in for a temporary hold while he groped for feathers and the belt. The silver Loftwing pulled up beside him, looked him in the eye and spoke:

"What have I always told you?" the silver creature asked him. "Straighten up and fly right!"

That's when a flabbergasted Link slipped right off his bird. He fell and whistled, but his partner did not come for him. Link landed hard upon silver feathers.

"You! You just… talked!" Link gasped.

"Of course I did." Where did Link recognize that voice from? "Brace yourself, we're gonna land."

The bird's feet landed hard upon the upper Academy grounds of the Silent Realm Skyloft. Link fell and rolled off, landing in a heap. The great silver bird perched before him, cocking its head in a curious manner.

"You talked," Link said again, getting his bearings. "You're a Loftwing."

"So?"

"Loftwings can't talk and nothing in the Silent Realm has ever spoken to me. That's where we are, right?"

"Where else?"

To Link's astonishment, the Loftwing shifted and changed. The feathers of the wings folded in upon themselves and the animal shrunk. A human form stood before him – one dressed in a yellow tunic and floppy hat. Unlike Link, the figure was completely solid here – freckles and all.

"Pipit?"

Pipit reached out his hand and helped Link up. "I don't understand," Link said. "You're… you're dead."

"And you don't really belong in the spirit world," Pipit answered. "You're dreaming. I didn't know of any other way to reach you."

"Pip… I'm so, so sorry…"

"For what?"

"You only died in my arms. I failed to save you."

Pipit shrugged. "Where's the failure in that? You tried. I tried, too. I tried to hold on. It really wasn't so bad… better to have a friend with me than to die alone."

"You seem… inordinately okay with this."

"The world moves on. That's the way it is. Dad's proud of me. I know that much. And you… you've been under a lot of stress lately – worse than when you were facing the riding-styles exam."

"Pipit… you died. I was supposed to protect you and I failed to. I am a failure as a king and as your friend. What's more…I'm going to be a father. What if I cannot protect my child? Or Zelda?"

Pipit shook his head. "You are not a failure. Listen… you've gotta straighten up and fly right if you want to be a proper leader for your people – and like it or not, you have to be, Link. This is your fate. You did a marvelous job of protecting Zelda in the past – you faced the great-granddaddy of all monsters, remember? You can do it, Link. I have faith in you."

"But…you…"

"No buts. I chose to protect you. Don't forget that. My fate was my own. Listen… I am going to watch over you. I will find a way. You can't get rid of ol' Pipit that easy."

Link awoke with those final words echoing in his head. He felt relieved in a strange way. His hands didn't feel like they were coated in blood.

"Mornin' sleepyhead," Zelda said from the hearth. She was working the end of a frying pan in which some fresh eggs from their personal flock of cuccoos were sizzling.

"Zelda," Link sighed. "You should have waited for me to get up…"

"So overprotective. I'm fine, Link. I didn't even throw up today. You were tossing and turning and talking about silver birds or something, so I left you alone."

"Pipit came to me in a dream."

"Really?"

"He told me to straighten up and fly right, so that's what I'm gonna do."

Zelda smiled.

* * *

Months went by without great event – more people from outlying islands had come down to the Surface. A guild of merchants had come to Link and Zelda asking advice as to how to conduct trade in Eldin with the Mogma people and small-scale trade had been established. Faron had almost eaten Sparrot the fortune-teller - something that he had not foreseen when he'd taken a trip far into her territory to scout out new scrying materials. Link had rescued him. The Surface Knights were escorting builders, historians, art enthusiasts and pilgrims to the old Skyview Temple to see to its restoration.

The day came when Zelda was called upon to face one of the mortal agonies she had both looked forward to and had not looked forward to. Link paced and sweat outside their home until Kestra, a skilled midwife originally from one of the islands north of Skyloft, bade him to come inside.

"A strong one," Kestra commented. "I should expect no less from a former Goddess, I suppose. Your little one came chargin' out, too, like he was eager to get into the world."

"He?" Link asked.

"He," the midwife nodded.

Zelda lay in bed with a sweet but tired smile. She held a weakly squirming bundle wrapped in a warm blanket. Link sat on a stool beside the bed.

"Look, Link…" Zelda said. "Our son. Isn't he the most beautiful thing in the world?"

The newborn was wrinkly and pink and anything but a picture of conventional beauty. A bit like a baby songbird, Link thought – how ugly and tender and naked they are when they come out of the shell, but still with an endearing nature, and of course, his "baby bird" was the most beautiful thing in the world because he was his.

The child had a light fuzz of blond hair and the startling blue eyes that all babies had when first born. Link knew that between him and Zelda's lineage that the child's eyes would likely remain that same color of blue, or even deepen. Zelda passed the boy into Link's arms and Link held him as if he were made of glass.

"You didn't name him, did you?" Link whispered.

"I have a name in mind, but I wanted us to agree."

"Well, we can't call him Unnamed Baby, now can we?"

Zelda laughed. "Do you have some gallant name in mind, Mr. Hero?"

Link sighed. "Well, I was thinking of naming him after a good, fallen friend, to tell the truth. It's been on my mind for months."

"The same has been on my mind, as well," Zelda agreed.

Link cuddled and rocked his son. "Welcome to the world, Pipit."

* * *

**END CHAPTER 4. **


	5. Fledglings of the Plains

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 5: Fledglings of the Plains**

The map of the Surface of Hyrule that most of the people from Skyloft knew resided within the chamber of the Goddess' statue. It was incomplete. Only the main provinces of Hylia's old kingdom were displayed upon it, ignoring lands in between and beyond. As the people of the Sky explored the Surface, new maps were quickly being penned upon scrolls.

For example, there was a great range of mountains in between Faron and Lanayru that snaked along Faron and fed into Eldin. Between those mountains and the first stirrings of Lanayru's desert was a vast plain. It became a high desert country nearer the deep desert and a sea of grass nearer the mountains. The mountain range served to regulate the Surface's weather, keeping most of the precipitation in Faron and denying it to Lanayru. The plains caught enough of the moisture to grow grasses, but not forest. Areas that people shifted to a past state with the Timeshift Stones spoke of an era when the desert caught more rain. The desert of long ago resembled the high desert parts of the plains as of the time when the re-colonization of the Surface by the Hylian people began.

Yet, there were no people upon the sea of grass when Fledge fell in love with it. He loved flying over the waving grasses on his peridot-green Loftwing, sweeping low to touch the seedy stalks. The shy boy marveled at the multitudes of large, strong beasts that milled about grazing.

The people of Skyloft knew what cattle were. How else did they get the leather used for boots, gauntlets and bird-riding belts? There was an island far to the west of Skyloft about the same size as the city that raised cattle and attractive blue goats with joined horns. Beef was an expensive luxury in Skyloft due to issues with transport, but it was enjoyed by many people there, including, on occasion, students in the Academy cafeteria. Fledge remembered the first time Pipit had tried steak – how his eyes bugged out his head and how happy it had made him – having apparently never eaten it before he'd started classes.

There were great beasts other than cattle upon these plains, however, creatures that the people of the Sky had previously known only in legends. Among the strong animals roved herds of creatures that resembled cattle, yet they had large, humped backs and curly, shaggy coats. There were also creatures that the legends told were once harnessed and ridden by the mythical people of Hylia's Realm. The old books called them "horses." These fascinated Fledge most of all.

The boy had taken to camping and living out on the plains.

"Looks like I've become independent now that I've gotten some muscle," he told his bird as she walked faithfully beside him one morning. He looked over the slightly curved horizon at the rising sun and listened to the plains birds sing sweetly and make raspy calls.

"Twee! Twee! Twee!" he whistled back, closing his eyes. A chill wind kicked up from the grasses to touch his cheeks. His Loftwing answered the bird calls with her own loud "WARK!" and several of the tiny birds in the immediate area flew off in fear. Fledge laughed and pattered her on the neck.

"Queen of the birds here ain't ya?" he laughed. She walked right behind him. Fledge's Loftwing was a little more protective of him than most birds were of their riders. Perhaps it was because of the early nervousness inherent in their relationship, or because she sensed her boy as needing extra-special care. Their "connection" wasn't as strong as most, but it was still the bulk of each of their lives. When Fledge was younger he had taken a full week before he was confident enough to climb upon his bird for the First Flight and he'd gotten sick immediately after it.

He'd heard the story of Link's immediate connection to his Loftwing and was, like everyone else on Skyloft, jealous of it, though he cheered Link on. Link had been everything Fledge wanted to be and was not; brave, confident, strong, and nothing ever seemed to faze him.

"It is strange how life goes isn't it?" he told his bird, not sure she could understand him, as he thought about everyone at the Academy. "Our class, girl… everything's gone so differently for us than we expected."

"Wark?"

"Take Link. If there was anybody in our class cut out to be a knight, it was him, and now, he's not a knight, he's a king!"

"Chirrup!"

"And Zelda… she's… the Goddess. That just blows my mind. I've been praying to the Goddess since I was little and to think she was sitting next to me in class and neither of us knew it! I mean… it doesn't really kill my faith in life… great powers made the world and the world's full of mysteries, but it's just strange."

"…"

"Karane… she's still aiming to graduate, maybe the only one of us who is anymore, and she wants to come work down here on the Surface."

"Wark."

"Last I heard, Cawlin was dating the Item Check Girl, or trying to date her but running into problems with her father or something. And something about getting into 'paranormal investigation,' whatever that is. And Stritch is trying to become a great scientist, ento-ento-mologist, something like that down here. He'd like some of the bugs we've found, wouldn't he?"

"Purrrr."

Fledge sighed deeply. "Poor Pipit… he became a knight after all, but he…d-died. He was strong, all cut-out for it like Link… I never thought he'd be the first casualty of the Surface…"

"Warr…."

"And Groose – macho, meat-head Groose… can you believe it, girl? He's trying to figure out the mechanics of Time! I never would have guessed he'd be doing that. It's almost as weird as the thing with Zelda being the incarnation of Hylia. Weird, weird, weird…"

Fledge squint his eyes and looked at a grazing herd. He was distant enough from the animals to not alert them to his presence. "And what am I doing? I'm hiding… I worked hard to get strong like Link and unlike him, I'm not helping anyone with my strength, all I'm doing is hiding like the coward I am."

Fledge let out a long sigh. One of the main reasons he'd taken to the plains was because no one knew where he was. He'd dropped out of the Academy and, aside from trips every once in a while to read books from the library in Hylia's Temple, he was avoiding the Hylian Settlement. Fledge knew that he was never cut out to become a Skyloft Knight. The Academy was something that his parents had pushed him into; particularly his father who was ashamed of his "Nancy-boy wimp of a son" and thought knight-training would whip him into shape.

Sure, he'd partnered with a bird just like everyone among the sky-islands did, but he spent most of his time on the ground when he could help it because he got airsick easily. Any of the sharp, swift aerobatic maneuvers his classes focused on would leave him losing his breakfast every day such classes were in session. He could barely lift a sword during Eagus' sword-training, and now that he had the strength to wield one through the maneuvers without breaking a sweat, he knew he was still a klutz about technique and finesse.

Fledge had gained physical strength but knew that he still lacked in mental strength. His father would never understand this and Fledge feared that any trip back to Skyloft right now would entail him meeting his parents – who'd lived off-island, but word always traveled fast around the Sky – and dealing with their anger and disappointment. Travel to the Hylian Settlement carried the same risk. He'd actually ducked out of Pipit's funeral early – just after all the important rituals had been done – to avoid dealing with his parents. He'd found his Loftwing difficult to pilot while tears still blinded his eyes.

These wild plains were where he was free.

A strange sight caught his eye as he walked. His bird flapped skyward, circled above him and then disappeared from sight, probably off to find herself food, so Fledge walked alone. As he crested a small rise he saw a small horse, walking in circles and pacing. It was a young one, a baby.

Fledge squinted. "A..f-filly," he said, trying to remember the term from an ancient book he carried in his adventure pouch that described the beasts. Its language was close to modern and readable by him, but barely. A quick glance at her undercarriage told Fledge that this little horse was a female. "Mares" were the adult form, and "stallions" were the adult males. Male horses were easy for him to spot on the plains, for, when relaxed, their attributes were quite impressive, though very few of the ancient artists had ever drawn a mighty stallion in a relaxed state. There was a "third-sex" of horse Fledge had learned from that same book, created by people in the old days because some found mares unfavorable and stallions were even more difficult to control – the gelding. When Fledge had read on about how geldings were made, he'd crossed his legs and felt ill.

Fledge saw that the filly wasn't alone. Upon the ground lay a large body – a dead mare that the boy assumed must be the little horse's mother. "Poor thing," he said. He walked closer, shivering a bit. He'd never been this close to a horse before, living or dead. The foal did not run. It snorted at him and stamped a fore-hoof and paced some more, as if trying to guard its mother, or as if still relying upon her protection because it didn't know what to do.

The young man edged closer. He examined the mare's carcass. Whatever had killed her was not apparent. He felt a twist in his guts when he looked at her big, glazed-over eye. Horses had such large, soulful eyes and this one was soulless. A fly landed upon and crawled across it. The filly fled to a few paces away. She stared at Fledge warily. Both mare and offspring were the same color, a chestnut brown with black in the mane and tail. Fledge could see stripes on the mare's legs.

Fledge had read that many things could kill a horse, things that would not have bothered a Loftwing. Loftwings rarely had problems with their guts backing up and taking on fluid, for example, for the simple fact that they were, like people, able to vomit. Many problems with the legs could be fatal for a horse – particularly a wild one. This was all in addition to the many predators they faced. Fledge had seen lions and wolves out on these plains – also "mythical" animals recently brought into "reality" as far as Skyloft consciousness went.

"You aren't going to survive out here on your own, are you?" Fledge asked, looking at the frightened foal. The living animal lowered its head and tore up a clump of grass. Its head went upright and its ears shot up when Fledge took a step toward it. "At least you can eat on your own, but I don't think you're going to last the night when the wolves come out," he said, trembling slightly.

To his surprise, Fledge found himself edging toward the little horse. The horse kept backing away, but he kept advancing. Then he shot an arm out and found himself hugging the filly's neck. It tried to back away from him and kicked its hind legs while he held firm, strong enough to wrestle the animal in toward himself. "Sssh…" he said. "Calm down. Calm down. I can take you to my camp. Sssh, now. If we stay here with your mother, you'll die. She'll attract predators. Come on now… sssh. I am trying to help you."

Fledge blinked. Was he really doing what he was doing? The horse seemed to calm a bit, nonetheless. His newly toned-up arms were really coming in handy here. He edged and pressed and led the horse back to the little area he was camped in, edged up against a rock formation. That was when Fledge realized that he had no pen to contain the little horse and he had no idea how to tie her so that she wouldn't hurt herself. He released her with a sigh and watched her run off. She stayed within sight and stared at him, stamping and snorting.

"I want to protect you," Fledge pleaded, "but I don't know how… I suppose you have a better idea of how to survive out here than I do."

The filly stayed to the edges of his camp the entire day. Fledge tried offering apples that he'd found in a wild orchard by the clear-running creek he liked to gather clean water at. He'd tried his hand at fishing there and had gotten a few fish, but was largely unlucky. Fledge found food where he could out here and was living largely off apples, wild tubers and stamina fruit. When night fell, Fledge sat by the fire, listening to the howls of wolves. He had a basic sword for protection and had yet to actually need to use it. He wondered what this plain might have been like filled with monsters. He had no idea if it even was, for Link had not come out here on his great quest and had no stories of battles here.

Fledge's Loftwing roosted nearby. In a flash of firelight, he noticed that she seemed to be roosting something, for she was acting like a bird with an egg or a small chick. To his surprise and delight, he saw, beneath one of her wings, the little horse bedded down upon her front knees, her hind legs splayed out to her side. Her long little head was dipped down in sleep.

He awoke the next morning to the strange, ticklish feeling of velvet lips and hot breath from a large nose nuzzling his side. When he rose, the horse jumped, snorted and backed away from him. She stood staring at him warily in the morning light.

Fledge sighed and smiled. "Maybe I should give you a name," he said. It was not customary for the people of Skyloft to give their Loftwings names, for the creatures were considered as much a part of a person as one's own body. Still, sometimes Fledge called his bird "Citrine" because he found it easier to call her with a name and the color of her main body feathers reminded him of the insides of citrus fruits and of certain kinds of stones. He didn't think a horse would have the same sorts of intuitive powers as a Loftwing, and a name came to his mind – something from an ancient word for affection.

"Phila," he said, "I think I'll call you Phila. You're a filly, so it works out."

The horse blinked and resumed grazing.

In coming days and weeks, Phila followed Fledge wherever he went. When he went to find food, she followed behind him. When he went looking for nice big rocks to bench-press or wild pumpkins to toss, she was there. The most exhilarating thing, Fledge found, was to ride his Loftwing low over the plain as Phila ran below him.

* * *

Phila did not take long to start growing big. She was not fully-grown by the time Fledge had developed enough of a gentle relationship with her to pet her and caress her ears, but she was still of an impressive size.

Fledge got an idea born of the ancient book he'd been reading. "Hey, Phila…" he said to her as he rubbed her back. "D-don't be alarmed… I want to try something."

With that, he arched up his leg, grabbed firmly to the base of her mane and slid himself onto her back. Phila whinnied and paced. "Easy, now," Fledge said gently to the alarmed horse. She kicked and bucked, but he held firm, gripping his legs to her sides. While his workout regimen focused on his upper body, all of the walking he'd been doing across the grassy reaches had given him impressive leg-muscles to match his arms and chest. Fledge was surprised at how easily Phila submitted to this, but he knew when she'd just about had enough. As he slid off, she jumped and he fell. He dusted himself off and laughed about it.

This happened several more times. Fledge made a habit of easing up to Phila and mounting her every day, for longer and longer periods. She soon grew used to carrying his weight. He did not have the "reins" he'd read about in the old book to control her, but found that he could direct her by pressing his things and legs into her sides. Pressing to one side found her turning in that direction.

Soon, Fledge found himself riding across the plains while his bird soared overhead. He'd reach skyward and touch his hand to her dipping claws.

* * *

Little dark purple cubes glittered in crystalline splendor, nestled tightly into a sizeable crack within a large, sandstone-colored structure in the partial shape of a great gear. A large chunk of the gear was missing and lay on the earth before it, partially concealing a great tawny-colored platform.

A young man with hair like a proud flame sat upon the base of this platform, diligently polishing a small purple stone. He chiseled it with small tools, trying to form it into the shape of a perfect cube to match the many others that had been fitted into the crack in the gear. The white fabric of a tent ruffled in the breeze behind him. Groose's skin had taken on an impressive tan from working out here in the glare of sunny days.

He looked up as he saw something approaching him out of the dust. "What the-?" he asked. Groose was not used to visitors and then, they tended to drop down on him from Loftwings. He squinted as the shape grew closer and gained definition. "Fledge?" he asked.

Fledge pulled up into the ancient Temple of Time courtyard astride an animal that Groose had never seen before. "Good job, Phila," he said, patting the quadruped's neck. "Heya, Groose!" He said to the flabbergasted Groose.

"What in the world is that thing?" Groose yelped.

"You didn't pay much attention in myth and history class, did you?" Fledge asked.

Groose quirked an eyebrow. "I got a lot of sleep in that class."

"This is a horse," Fledge laughed. "She's why I came all the way out here to see you."

"Horse, huh? How are you riding it? I mean…what….whoa!"

Fledge slid off Phila. "This is Phila and it's a long story."

Groose grabbed Fledge by the shoulders and looked him over, shaking him. "Is that really you, Fledge?" he called, "Are you sure you haven't been replaced with Link or somethin'?"

"No, Groose, its' me! I found the horse when she was little and kinda… we'll we're friends now. It's kind of like a person and a Loftwing. I couldn't ride her all this way across the chasms, so my bird carried her most of the way, but I needed to bring her to you because I thought you'd be able to solve some problems."

Groose blinked, looking from Phila to Fledge. "You tamed a wild animal."

Fledge shrugged. "Sort of, I guess."

"I can't believe it. That sounds like something Link would do."

"Really?" Fledge said, his eyes bright.

"Well, yeah. Hey, let me show you the Gate of Time here. Big Groose has almost got it figured out. Been polishin' Timeshift Stones and I'm gonna get it repaired in no time."

Fledge looked up at the Gate. "If I say it's impressive, you won't pound me, right?"

"Aw, you know I ain't like that anymore. You do think it's impressive, though, don't ya?"

"Yeah, I do," Fledge laughed. "All those little cubes look like they took a lot of work. How do you figure they have to be cubes?"

"I saw the other Gate of Time come together and it was all in little cubes before it assembled. It's just an experiment, I guess. I'm not sure it'll really work. Sooo… you came to ol' Groose for help?"

"Yeah! Yeah!" Fledge said, keeping an eye on his horse, which was milling by one of the courtyard walls. "I figured I could come to you or Gondo, but I don't know where Gondo is and I knew you'd be here. You're good with mechanics and all… I thought you'd be able to help me engineer something…"

"Engineer something? You don't want me to load your critter into the Groosinator, I hope. I'm sure the only reason the thing didn't kill Link was 'cause he's Link – luckiest guy in the universe."

"No, no, no. I'm worried about her hooves. Look at how ragged they are. I think it's from me riding her. I need something to trim and file them. I also have a few ideas from this book I've got. Do you see here? People used to have saddles on 'em. I think riding might be more comfortable that way."

Groose scratched his chin while looking at the illustrations in the book Fledge held open for him. "I think we might be able to come up with something. After all, once I've got the Gate of Time finished, I'll have all the time in the world…"

* * *

Phila's hooves, clad in shoes of iron, clip-clopped upon the cobblestones of the main street of the Hylian Settlement. Fledge rode in like a prince, not caring anymore that he might meet his parents there. If they were disappointed in him, he did not care, for he knew that he had done something important and had something important to show everyone.

Phila was wary and he could feel her tenseness beneath him. Fledge paid attention to the darting of her ears and he kept a tight grip on the reins – one of the many things he and Groose had made for her after the old patterns. Fledge had taught himself to use them and had gotten Phila used to them. He was embarrassed as she polluted the streets behind her with a few sizeable spats, but he took it as a sign of her good health.

People stared and muttered and whispered as he rode up toward the Royal Cabin. He was about to ask a Surface Knight about Link when he saw him. "Hey!" Fledge said waving.

Link held a tiny child by the hand – a little boy with golden hair similar to his who couldn't have been yet two years old. Zelda emerged from the cabin and stared, wide-eyed at him. Fledge circled Phila around. "Hey!" he called.

Zelda's eyes suddenly looked distant. "Zel?" Link asked, scooping the child up in his arms.

"I am looking at something from ancient days," Zelda said cryptically.

Link approached his old friend and the strange animal he was aboard. "It's okay!" Fledge laughed. "I've got her under control! Long time, no see!"

Link cautiously reached a hand out, balancing his son on his hip. Phila sniffed the proffered hand and snorted. "That's a plains animal, isn't it? You're riding it like a Loftwing…"

"Yeah!" Fledge exclaimed, "Isn't it great? Groose made the saddle for me, and the reins, the bit, the handy little doodads my feet are in for mounting. The blanket there's to keep the saddle from rubbing her back too hard…"

"How in the world?"

"I came all this way to show you! I'd heard you and Zelda had that kid you were waiting for, is this him?"

"Yeah," Link said shyly. He stepped back as Fledge dismounted. Fledge took the reins in one hand, using them as a lead. He shook them when Phila flinched. "Hey!" he scolded.

"His name is Pipit," Link continued. "He had his first birthday not too long ago and is just about halfway toward his second."

"A nice name," Fledge sighed. "I was gone for that long?"

"It's like you dropped off the face of the planet… and Skyloft," Link began.

"I was hiding," Fledge confessed, "but I found a reason to return. Link, Zelda… this is Phila..."

* * *

Fledge demonstrated his newly-formed, self-taught skills. Phila was accommodated hastily with a pen that had originally been built for cattle.

"Horses," Fledge explained to Link, "Well, they're special. They're anxious like me… they're really strong, but they don't know how strong they are, because they're surrounded all the time out on the plains by things that want to eat them. They're just wired to be afraid and cautious almost all the time. I think I understand them, Link."

"They're strong, but they think they're weak," Link mused. He petted Phila's neck as she leaned over the rough-hewn wooden fence. Fledge had expressed concern over her chewing it. Fledge had taught both Zelda and Link how to approach his baby. It came to Zelda quite naturally. Link less so, but he had learned.

"It's like a Loftwing, I guess," Fledge said with a shrug. "You have to be kind… gentle, but also firm when it's called for. To tell the truth, I'm not even sure I should be riding her this young. I'm worried I'm gonna mess up her back or something. If the horses out on the plains are any guess, she still has growing to do."

"You're amazing, Fledge," Link said.

"What? Me? Amazing? You're calling me amazing?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because I'll never be as cool as you, Link."

"Fledge, you did something I don't think I could do."

"Sure you could! If you'd been there!"

"I don't know, Fledge. I may have just knocked back an arrow and put her out of her misery, then had steak that night…"

"Link!"

"I've killed a lot of things, Fledge."

"But those were monsters and stuff."

"True, true. Still, Fledge, I don't have words to describe how awesome this is! Loftwings really aren't cut out for the Surface life, you know? If people used these animals in the past, they could again, but you're the first person smart enough… and brave enough to figure out how!"

"I don't know, Link," Fledge said with a shrug. "This could be just a one-time thing. I've just been experimenting. Phila's my friend."

"It seems that you know more about her kind than any of us do right now. We could learn a lot from you."

* * *

Queen Zelda delivered a speech in the central plaza while Fledge rode Phila around her.

"It is imperative," Zelda said in a loud, strong voice, "that we revive the ancient arts – and invent new ones! If you don't feel strong, don't let that stop you! Use your minds and your strong hearts! Be brave and invent! Explore the land and see what it has to offer you! The future belongs to you!"

Thus it began with one young man and one orphaned animal… From this humble start a new age began – one in which Hyrule was run on horsepower.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 5 **


	6. A Slice of Life Pie

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 6: A Slice of Life Pie**

Seven years brought prosperity to the Hylian Settlement, which had quickly become Hyrule City. The burgeoning Royal Family was in the process of moving out of their initial cabin and into the "castle" that was built as a governing center. It was modest as far as palaces went, nothing like the ones in the tales of old – just a place with rooms for offices and meetings and a family residence for Hyrule's leaders on a second level, but it was built of strong stone-brick. Zelda foresaw that succeeding generations would expand the structure and, for now, felt a little awkward moving into it, but her family did need more space than the old cabin could provide.

The queen of Hyrule walked with her king through the center of town, heading toward the southern end with their children. Pipit and his sister, Araucana, skipped and ran on ahead of their parents. Link bounced a giggling Taurin in a holster on his back. Taurin was the newest edition to the family, just beginning to form some of his babble into the simplest words, his apparent favorite being "mine!" He'd been named for the land just the other children had been named for the sky. Araucana was a bright five-year old and Pipit was nearing his eighth birthday.

The family was headed to Uncle Bats' Daycare for the day. Between the children and dealing with delegation, leadership and general politics, Link and Zelda rarely had a chance for any relaxation. Today, they'd scheduled an afternoon to themselves in Faron Woods. Thankfully, the children liked Mr. Batreaux a great deal and were happy to spend a day with friends at his place, which doubled as a primary-education school. They'd even have a visitor today. The Skyloft apothecaries (Bertie and Luv), were spending a week down in Hyrule City and had their daughter in tow, Maggie. Araucana loved Maggie like the big-sister she didn't have. The girl and Pipit argued all the time, but in a way that reminded Link and Zelda of when they were little.

"Hey, Momma!" Araucana chimed, "Did Mr. Batreaux tell you any stories when you were a kid?"

"No," Zelda gently answered, "I didn't know him when I was your age."

"Really? 'Cause he's really old. He says he's like, a thousand years old or somethin'."

"Hmmm," Link mused, "You know what, he might actually be."

"Nu-uh!" Pipit contested, "People don't get that old! Only gods and dragons and monsters and stuff!"

Link laughed. "I do have a story about him when you are ready."

"I'm ready!" Araucana chimed.

Link rubbed her head. "No, I don't think you are. I don't think most people are ready for that kind of story."

"Why not?"

"Because most adults would be afraid to let you kids play with him if I told that story, even though he's a very good person."

"Why?"

"The same reason Daddy can't tell you everything that happened on his adventure yet," Link sighed.

"You're keeping a secret!" Araucana laughed.

"Yes. You remember how special secrets are, right?"

"Uh huh! Hey, you know what? Last time, Mr. Batreaux told us that there are secret little people living around all over the place, but only special children can see them – and only when the little people want them to."

"Oh?"

"Yeah! I've been looking around all over under things but I haven't caught any yet. I don't think they live in the city 'cause we've got remlits and cuccoos and they don't wanna get ate."

"Ah."

"Mr. Batreaux has the best stories at story-time!" Pipit championed. "He doesn't even need to read them out of books; they're all in his head. I really like the one about the lone knight and the sixteen giant-creatures of fur-and-stone. It was really sad, though! This guy was trying to bring this girl back to life and…"

They'd come upon the southern limit of the city, where the brickwork and cobblestone met the grass and ground leading into the wilderness. It really did just stop abruptly like that, and looking out over the forest beyond was a marble statue, just about twice life-size. Pipit looked up to it. It was the first time he'd seen it in a finished state. It even had a little white and green spat on the right shoulder, meaning that it had now been christened and accepted by the local wildlife.

There were three grand statues currently in Hyrule City, aside from the great Monument of the Goddess in the dead center. They were all considerably smaller than the Goddess, being each about twice life-size of the people they were commissioned to represent. They were a great civic project – a way for the people of Hyrule to honor heroes, provide work for artists, and they beautified the city, as well as serving to remind people of history.

One of these statues was of Impa and resided just outside the old Hylia Temple and Library. It was of Impa as she was in old age, sculpted from descriptions and sketches made by Link, Zelda and Groose. They'd all decided that she would prefer her elder and supposedly wiser self when it came to a memorial-monument. Groose had approved of it when finished, which was the best acceptance anyone would hope for.

Another statue stood at the west end of town and depicted an individual who was still alive and stood tall much to its subject's embarrassment. The statue was created anyway because very many people wanted to give him the honor and liked the idea that he could see it as a living man. Also, the chief sculptor really wanted an excuse to sculpt the powerful body of a horse. At the west point of Hyrule City was an image of Fledge holding back a rampant Phila with a halter and rope. It was meant to depict him as the great wild-beast tamer who'd brought the new citizens of the Surface the power of the horse. Link and Zelda had humored the artists on that one. The statue looked like Fledge enough in the physical sense but it didn't capture his gentle and meek spirit at all.

The third statue, here on the south end, had been sculpted from descriptions and pictographs and everyone who'd known the subject thought it captured his spirit very well. A man in a Skyloft Knight uniform with a big arching hat, impressive beak of a nose, crossed arms and a stark marble gaze out into the wild was there for all to see. The pedestal upon which he stood told a story of his accomplishments and of how he'd saved the life of Hyrule's king as the cost of his own. The sculptors had somehow, through some subtle coloring of the stone, managed even to depict freckles.

"Whoa!" Pipit said, "This is the guy you and Mom named me after, right?"

"Yeah," Link said. "I've shown you pictographs of him before."

"This is really cool. He doesn't look anything like me, though, not even as a big honkin' statue, though the statue is _almost _as cool as I am."

Link laughed. "Of course not. You're not nearly as tall, little kiddo, and I don't mean just the big statue. All kids of mine are destined to be short, you see. Besides, your sister is the one hogging all the freckles in the family… But he was very smart and very brave and I think you'd do very well to grow up to be like him. We've told you the stories, and so has Lady Karane."

"I wanna be like you, Dad."

Link laughed. "Look, there's Maggie. She's waving, you should go say hello."

"Maggie?" Araucana exclaimed. She immediately ran off to greet her older friend. Pipit followed along after her.

Link adjusted Taurin's pack and noticed that the baby had fallen asleep. He could feel drool seeping into the back of his tunic. He was wearing his adventuring clothes, which was not what he usually wore day-to-day anymore, just because he and his wife were going out into the woods. He was going to head back home to get his sword and shield before they set out, after dropping off the children. Zelda was wearing practical clothing, as well - pants and a purple knight's tunic, which was very different from what she wore when she addressed her people formally.

"It turned out really nice," Zelda said.

"Well, the last time Mallara was here, she broke down and cried and hugged Mr. Miguel to thank him for it, so I think it's as good a tribute as we're going to get. No stone can truly capture a soul, but… it's beautiful."

"Mallara put in a bid to move down here permanently. The courier brought it to me yesterday."

"Really? What does she want to do? I mean, if she's going to be alone, our old cabin will be free soon."

"Apparently," Zelda said, "She'd like to open a textile and seamstress business."

"Just as long as she's not putting in a bid to be a housecleaner."

Zelda smacked Link on the arm. "I remember buying homespun remlit-yarn from her years ago… very nice stuff, actually. I knitted it into the best set of winter-mittens I ever made."

"A little known secret…" Link said, "Is that I didn't always go to you for clothing repairs. Pipit – the late Pipit, I mean – was very good at patching. He'd take care of a pair of pants or shirt so that you wouldn't even know it was torn. I once asked him where he learned that and he grumbled something about his mother…"

"Cuccoos can't fly!" a small, female voice shouted.

"Nuh-uh! Can too! We have some! I've seen them fly!"

Maggie and little Pipit were apparently having an argument over the flight-mechanics of domestic fowl. Pipit the Second stood in front of the statue of Pipit the First and, quite unknowingly, imitated the stone's pose perfectly – arms crossed indignantly and an intense glare. Then he ruined the moment by sticking his tongue out and going "Pfffft!" at little Maggie. Just because she was older than he was didn't make her right.

Link's eyes widened.

"Darling, what's wrong?" Zelda asked.

"Did you see that? I think I just had déjà vu."

* * *

"It is entirely possible," Zelda said as they sat upon the grassy bank of Swiftblade Creek next to a pair of fishing poles with their lines in the water and butt-ends rammed firmly into the mud of the creek-side.

"How so?" Link questioned. "You were already pregnant when Pipit died."

"Children are vessels," Zelda answered. "Not all of them gain their spirits right away. When I was with Impa, exploring the land and regaining the memories of Hylia, I had a very vivid dream. It was of my last moments as Hylia as I entered the mortal life. My mortal body was about half-formed within my mother. I knew I could have waited as long as the moment at which I took my first breath as Zelda to enter in, but I chose to enter early for the sake of spending more time with my mother. As Hylia, I knew that her life would not be a long one."

Link rubbed Zelda's back. "You had time with her, though, and that's precious."

"More than the time you had with your parents."

"Yeah."

"So, yes, it is entirely possible that our son may be our old friend. I do not know for certain, though. In any case, it is different now. Our son's life is his own. He really shouldn't be asked to be anything other than Prince Pipit of Hyrule, a child of the Surface, even if it could be confirmed that he once was anyone we've known before. I was Hylia and I am Zelda now. You were the Ancient Hero and you are the Hero of now."

Zelda smiled and Link took her by the hand. "It is my sincere hope that if he's lived before that he doesn't remember it," Zelda finished. "I think the fact that you bear no memories of your former life is fortunate for you."

"You seem to bear Hylia well."

"The knowledge was very hard at first, but I have come to terms with it."

"He shows some signs that… kinda freak me out sometimes." Link confessed, "Like this morning with the statue – that glare he does… just little mannerisms like that. And the fascination with swords…"

Zelda and Link had almost had simultaneous heart-attacks when they'd found Pipit, at age three, playing with Pipit' the First's sword on the floor in the center of their cabin. Link had gone into the kitchen area to cut himself some bread and cured meat for a snack while Zelda had gone outside for but a moment to address someone who'd come by knocking on the door. Each thought their little boy would be fine for just a few minutes, playing with his wooden blocks. They had no idea how the child had managed to get the sword off its display-hanger on the wall, but Link had come in to find the child staring at his reflection in the un-sheathed blade. He'd dropped his sandwich and grabbed little Pipit up before he had the chance to cut himself. Link still kept the sword as a memorial to his friend, but he'd devised a way to hang it much tighter. After all, it wasn't to be used anymore.

He'd crafted the child a wooden practice sword when he thought his boy had grown old enough to imitate Daddy out on the training grounds. Link's son now had a least a rudimentary understanding that swords were not toys. Araucana, for her part, wasn't nearly as interested in her papa's swords as she was in his bow. Link had crafted her a small bow and arrows with blunted tips she could shoot at a stack of straw bales and pumpkins.

"He wants a Loftwing," Zelda said, awakening Link from an almost-snooze.

"Huh, wha?"

"Pipit told me wants a Loftwing, like we've got."

"We hardly use ours anymore… we mostly just let them fly free. You know, I'm actually thinking of scheduling a visit out to Lonordona to Fledge's ranch and asking him to finally teach me how to ride a horse. With the continued expansion of the castle, we could probably stable horses… If they're the future, we should be riding them."

"They're touchier than Loftwings," Zelda added, "Besides… maybe we shouldn't cut all ties to the sky in a single generation. Although I do not ride my bird much anymore, my Loftwing is still very important to me. The human contract with them is coming to an end, but I know there are some who will still be drawn to that partnership, both those with feathers and those without."

"Before my partnership with you," Link admitted, "My bond with my bird was the most important thing to me. Pipit's a little young, but I haven't taken the kids to Skyloft in a long time. Maybe I should call my bird down and do just that. I'll show Pip how to sense and call and maybe something interesting will happen. It's been a while since Pipit's been there and Araucana was so young she probably doesn't remember it at all, and Taurin hasn't been to the Sky at all-"

"Taurin stays," Zelda said matter-of-factly. "It is too dangerous for him. We'll schedule you a few days off. You can take Pipit and Araucana for a visit. I'll stay here with the baby."

"Alone, Zelda?"

"I'll call Lady Karane in to do royal bodyguard duty. I'll have no fear with her around, and it'll be easier for her than the last time she did personal attendance to us, since the 'little monsters' will be with you."

Link chuckled remembering how his older children, having no fear of Karane's title – "The Iron Lioness," decided to play a game of "Let's climb Mt. Karane." The look on her face was priceless, which was probably why he lingered more than he should of in prying little Pipit and little Araucana off of her armored person.

"It's good, isn't it?" Link said, looking out over the flow of the creek.

"What is?"

"The world," Link answered. "What we're doing now, this brave new age. Are we headed into a Golden Era?"

Zelda hugged him from behind. "Maybe," she said, "though such things are a myth."

"Huh? Wha-?"

"No times are perfect. Even the days of Hylia had the usual natural and human struggles before the rising of Demise. I suppose, in some ways, all times, even those that are best for most of the people, aren't good for some. The idea of Golden Ages is really just nostalgia."

"When did you get depressing, Zelda?"

"Not depressing - philosophical. There are some things I have realized since I've regained those ancient Goddess-memories… just how hard the mortal life is, for one. I guess I am feeling remorse. I really just never knew before."

"I want to make this age the best it can possibly be, for as long as it can be."

Zelda gave him a kiss on the cheek. "And that's why you have a Hero's heart."

* * *

"Grandpa! Grandpa!"

Pipit and Araucana ran to embrace the elderly man at the Skyloft Knight Academy first-floor doors.

"Didja bring us something, huh, didja?" the children chimed.

Gaepora laughed. "How could I bring you anything when you're the ones who came here? I did not know you were even coming. Such a pleasant surprise!"

He looked up at Link, clad in his green clothes. "This was an unexpected visit. It's been a while." He looked around. "Where are Zelda and the baby? I bet he's grown since I was last in your city."

"Oh, they stayed down on the Surface, sir," Link explained. "Zelda was in her protective mother-mode. She didn't think Taurin was ready to fly yet, especially with me on my bird and the two ankle-biters all in a pile. Hey, kids! Stop jumping all over your grandpa like that!"

"Oh, it's quite alright," Gaepora said with his hooting laugh. "Hey, ow! That's Grandpa's knee!"

"Sorry, Grandpa," Pipit said. He and his sister calmed themselves.

"I decided to bring Pip and Ara here just to see their old man's stomping grounds," Link announced. "I also wanted to teach Pipit about Loftwings a little bit."

"Ho?"

"I don't think he's old enough to partner with one yet, but he wants to someday and I thought it might be nice to prepare him, just in case. Also, Araucana missed you."

"I love you, Grandpa!" The girl laughed as she tried to wrap her tiny arms around Gaepora's belly.

Link looked around the grounds. "Purple is this year's uniform color?"

There were a few knights milling about in dark purple uniforms, two young men and one young woman, all with the traditional windsock-hats. They were apparently off-Skyloft scattered-islanders since they weren't anyone that Link recognized. He saw Gully on the grounds – he was a student here now, but an underclassman and thus he was dressed in civilian clothing.

"Um, yes," Gaepora said, clearing his throat. "The first of the official seniors is that young man over there, Martin. He won the Wing Ceremony in a way that almost made yours look like a cakewalk – a very close race. In fact," he laughed, "It was almost a mirror of the first ceremony of the Yellow Knights' year. The others are a pair whose grades are up to par who will be participating in the upcoming ceremony."

Link recalled the way of the Academy. If someone's grades were good enough, they had the right to wear that year's senior uniform but where not an official senior until they'd completed the Wing Ceremony and, after that, their specialized on-the-job training and things considered extra-curricular came into play before an official graduation to full knight-status. Graduates of the Wing Ceremony were knights, but they were considered trainee-knights and still spent time at school. Link would have still studied his "specialties" before becoming a true Skyloft Knight had the Surface and Destiny not interfered with his and Zelda's lives. Link had not been entirely sure what he'd wanted to specialize in – he'd thought about swordsmanship and night-flying. Zelda had thought that night-flying was out of his league, given his easiness toward falling asleep. He'd contended that nighttime suited him just fine, that he just wasn't a "morning person," and the bickering would go on.

Since the Wing Ceremony was held once a year, some young knights waited for up to two to three years before making senior-status. If someone failed on their third year, they typically dropped out of the program and found something else to do as a career.

Karane had actually given Link a preview of what his senior uniform would look like, save for the round hat she'd opted for (a fashion option for female knights-in-training). She was one of the unofficial seniors in that her grades were perfect, (much more so than Link's had been) but she did not take part in the Wing Ceremony during his year. The reason was that her bird was sick – it had been a minor ailment, the Loftwing equivalent of the common cold, but she thought it wisest not to risk her partner with such a strenuous exercise. She'd been content to brush up on her sword-skills for another year.

"Martin may be joining you on the Surface soon, Link," Gaepora said. "He has expressed a wish to explore the Surface as a specialty. Krowan and Robin, the other two in purple, wish to train for the Sky. I have been meaning to speak with you and Eagus regarding the training of your Surface knights. We've just been sending those that want to train on the Surface right to you without any regard… well, for you and my daughter - nor have we been able to adequately prepare them, as Lady Karane has written us…"

Link rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, it is true that the 'castle' doesn't yet have a proper training hall. I really wanted to get Eagus' input on that, but I know that he is at least as busy as I am. The open-air grounds have been a good start, but we really do need more… It's been largely peaceful, but, as you know, what monsters we do have problems with there are much stronger and nastier than any the Sky knows. The Surface Knights have done well to keep civilians out of the most dangerous of the ancient temples, and to guard the restorers while they work on the Skyview… But they themselves have had problems, even after training with me. I've had to clear out a lot of areas myself, actually…"

Gaepora smiled. "I take comfort in the fact that my daughter married a one-man army, but it must be rough on you."

"Nah," Link dismissed. "It's not nearly as hard as finding her after she was taken and decided to play a game of timey-wimey ball with me. Most of the really strong beasts, if I didn't kill them, just went back to the shadows once Demise was sealed. Anyway, I've decided to come back for a week's stay. It might be a little small for me and the kids, but is my old dorm available?"

"Actually, it is not," Gaepora answered, "Robin's making use of it, but my quarters are open, as are Owlan's, since he's on one of his extended plant-studies."

"Again? I wasn't even notified. Oh, well, I guess I should be glad that Faron likes him. He really goes deep into the forest. I always worry about that…. With Faron…"

"Hoo-ooh. I am ever glad that we who remain in the sky have Levias as our patron, for he's never been known to crave any sacrifice of meat, only pumpkin soup. Anyway, his quarters would be most appropriate for you while I take the little ones."

"Most…appropriate?"

"Why, of course, my boy! The first day of your stay here is… the kids are going to have a day out with Grandpa while you get to tell my students about life on the Surface and show them your superior combat skills!" Gaepora thrust a little pin into the front of Link's tunic. "Congratulations. For the day, you're Instructor Link!"

The Academy bell rang and Link found himself, dumfounded, standing before a huge gathering of starry-eyed students, both uniform and civilian-clad.

Gaepora, for his part, walked away with Pipit and Araucana beside him. "Let's go get ice cream!" he said to happy shouts of "Yay!"

"Well, um…" Link stuttered, "Um… class…"

* * *

"I'm not ready yet," young Pipit said, looking into a sunset sky.

"Hmm?" His father asked. It was the final day of their visit to Skyloft. Araucana was playing with new friends while Link's eldest son watched the sky with him.

"For a Loftwing, I mean."

"Ah. I did think you were a little young."

"Does this make me cowardly?"

"Not at all. I think you've inherited your mother's wisdom. I was age ten when mine came to me."

"The red bird… the red bird comes to the brave, because it's the Hero's bird," Pipit said with a smile. "And the yellow ones come to cheerful people, and the blue ones come to creative people… like in the book you showed me."

"That's right, though people don't know if what the book says about colors is true."

"Gray ones come to warriors, people with a warrior-spirit, right Dad?"

"Yeah. That's what people think."

Pipit pointed to a bird lilting in the sky. The light was not fading enough that they could not make out the natural colors of the birds they were watching. The animal swept close to Skyloft. It was gray with its feathers tipped in yellow. Link did a double take. He'd seen a bird like that once, in a significant dream he'd had, only the bird was metallic silver with golden tips. The wild bird looked like a washed-out version of the creature Link remembered in his vision. It had been several years, but that dream stayed with Link.

"That one's calling to me," his son said, "But he says I'm not ready yet. Do you think he'll still be around here when I'm ready?"

"Yes," Link said slowly. "I think so."

* * *

**END CHAPTER 6 **


	7. Tin Man's Heart

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 7: Tin Man's Heart**

"Zzzt! How are you today, Mistress Fi? Rrt."

There was no answer, nor one expected.

"Drrzt. Scrapper is here for you. Zzrrt. Scrapper will always be here."

The lone robot – the only one to exist in the present time – set a bright magenta-colored flower with a greasy, bulbous stem before the Master Sword as it rested in its pedestal in Hylia's Temple. Light from a newly-installed stained-glass window shone from above, lighting the edges of the pristine blade.

"Vrrm. I left briefly to tend the garden. I hope this flower is acceptable and makes you happy. Rrrm. They exist outside of time, like we do. Zzt."

The little LD-unit who'd come to visit the sword took a soft cloth and buffed a spot on the blade near its Triforce engraving. He looked up at the window. He did not like it. It was an elaborate piece portraying a traditional winged Goddess-figure and a man in green holding the Master Sword aloft. Scrapper did not think that Master Shortpants deserved to be so honored. Likewise, although he had been originally constructed to serve the Goddess Hylia, he was not well-pleased with her.

Hylia had crafted life only to allow it to die. She'd crafted life with the intent that it die, yet there were creatures caught in-between.

"Zzzrm. Master Shortpants and his mistress never cared for the happiness of their tools. Zzzrt. I wish I could give you better light. Vrrt."

Scrapper had not known the Old Gods, nor had he remembered very much from the ancient days when Hylia reigned. His data-banks held a few files regarding the desert when it had been a green plain and some data regarding the family of Gondo. Most of his files from that time had been lost or corrupted when after he'd stopped working and suffered age and rust, but he remembered enough to be resentful.

"Zrrt. Those created to serve… Vrrm. We are faithful. Masters are not."

Scrapper had never been a standard LD-301S unit. Most of them had been built for mining. He was a transport-unit and, after a time, had come under the care and service of the family of one of the Hylian scientists working for Master Thunder Dragon Lanayru and the Goddess. Scrapper had always been "special," yet even the standard model LD-301S workers were programmed with emotion-simulators so as to better interact with organic beings. In a few units, over time, it was suspected that the emotions became genuine. The robots developed friendships and even complex, family-unit style relationships without the benefits or limitations of gender and the sexual politics that members of the organic races knew. Even so, they often took the roles of "husbands," "wives," "partners," "fathers," "sons" and the like in imitation of the Hylians they'd worked with.

Despite the emotion simulation and close relationships the robots developed, when one ceased to function, work and function for the rest went on as normal. A friend might mourn the cessation of function of a friend, but work was expected to continue and so it did. Grief did not last long. Much of the grief was a part of programming, after all.

Scrapper had no reason to think of the organic beings as any different. They had programming of their own, only filtered through squishy master-command centers ensconced in hard bone casings. Their fuel was food, their oil was blood and they weren't built hard enough to withstand the same pressures and stimuli that robots could. Yet, there were not a few of them that wouldn't throw their fragile flesh into danger to preserve the functioning of others with fragile flesh. Their programming did not allow them to just continue on with their normal functioning when one of their own fell, at least not for a while.

"Zzzrt. My function now is to take care of you as you are. My protocol has not changed. Rrrm. I am ever your servant, even as you are. Vrrm. This is not logical. Zzrt. I should not be acting so organic. Vrrm."

They called this kind of behavior and emotion "having a soul."

Scrapper wondered if he had one of those dreadfully human things. He had formed a bond with the artificial intelligence program of a mystical weapon, a program that had barely seemed to notice him. Something in his programming told him that if he did things for the sword-spirit, that maybe she would be well-pleased and want his companionship in the same way the ancient robots companioned with each other in an imitation of romantic partnerships. The moment he saw her, he felt a strange flow of energy within his circuitry. Perhaps it was only because he was newly-revived, but Fi had her electrons in all the right places. Her design was attractive and the energies she was giving off spoke of a mighty being.

In other words, she was a fine lady, and an entity that he would take upon as his worthy mistress. He had fallen in love, or at least, the robotic simulation of that emotion.

"Drrzt. Do the humans call what errant programming I am experiencing 'love' or 'lust?' Vrrzt. Either way, Mistress Fi, I am your real hero, not Master Shortpants. He hasn't even seen you in months. Zrrt. Jerk."

However, the thing that made Scrapper wonder if he'd had gained a "soul" was in the fact that he did not resume the work for which he had been created when he lost Fi. Instead, he spent his time in and around this temple, keeping a watch over Fi's sword and cultivating a garden of the ancient flowers that Master Shortpants had retrieved for him. He knew how to extract the oil and apply it to himself. He also used it to keep the blade that served as both body and tomb for Fi in a nice, polished condition.

"Zzrt. He planted the first batch of flowers. Rrt. I could have gotten them myself. Zrrt. Showoff. Vrrm."

The other thing that made LD-301S Scrapper wonder if he had such an organic thing as a "soul" was his ability to make his own decisions. The ancient robots in their time did as they were programmed and ordered to do. Gondo had done something for him that none of his previous masters has ever done; the mechanic had presented Scrapper with a decision to either continue serving him as he lived and did his work in the desert or to stay in Faron to be near Fi. Scrapper had chosen Fi. Gondo had given the little robot something that no master or supervisor had ever given a tool – freedom and a choice to take it, with well-wishing, no less.

"Mrrrm. Master Gondo was a good master. Vrrm. His family line was honorable. Vrrm. He was considerate, unlike most of those biological organisms. Zzzzt."

Master Shortpants had called him a "tool" once, but Scrapper was pretty well certain that when Link had called him that, it was a biological use for the term and meant as an insult. Scrapper was not sure exactly what the insult had referred to, only that the word was given in a way that was not a compliment. Scrapper reminded the twerp that he had merely been a tool of the Goddess, an organic servant utilized to her own purposes. Master Shortpants had then said that he did not mind, as he would follow her to the ends of Earth, beneath its depths, and beyond the sky if she needed him to.

It was that moment that Scrapper realized to his horror that he and Master Shortpants were not unalike. Link was a hopeless servant, programmed to be so – just like an LD-unit with overactive emotion processors and a worthy mistress. Still, Scrapper would never serve him again nor forgive him. The tool of the Goddess had sealed Mistress Fi's fate.

"I miss you, Mistress Fi. Zzt."

Her consciousness had faded. She was still, in a way, alive within the sword that made up her physical "body." Scrapper could feel the ghost of the telepathic connection that she'd used to call him when she needed him. She was fighting to contain and digest evil and had nothing to spare for anything else, such as being awake. If she even dreamed, it was deep and only of the mission. Scrapper felt something like "droplets" or "fragments" – fading and falling. She knew when he touched her and when he was nearby – that much he could process. She also seemed to know when Link or Zelda was in the area. Scrapper always got a weird spark running through him from that remnant of the telepathic bond.

"Vrrm. Mistress Fi is very brave. Mistress Fi was always very brave – the bravest fine lady I have ever known. Zrrt."

Mortality wasn't a concept that had occurred immediately to the ancient robots. They shut down for repair sometimes, turned on and off-line. Though a complete cessation of function without the ability to be repaired happened sometimes to the robots, they generally expected to be kept in good repair and to function indefinitely. Scrapper remembered them all having a vague awareness in regards to how their biological masters handled cessation of function, with their various beliefs regarding the fate of their energy. The robots did not know if they shared such a fate or if a permanent shut-down was like an indefinite stay in sleep-mode. Either way, they did not care. While the Hylians seemed to care a great deal about their fate, robots did not give it much thought. Such processing power was better served by doing their assigned work.

"Rrrt. Fi is doing very hard, very important work right now. Zzrm. But why does Mistress Fi have to be dead-asleep for it? Zrrm."

Fi was in a state that was… something else entirely – as far as Scrapper could feel her. It felt to him like being in a sleep-mode, but not completely off. She was in a death-like state, but not well and truly dead. She could not pass on to another form or an undiscovered country as she was bonded within the Master Sword. Through all this, there wasn't any home of her ever being truly and fully alive as she once was.

If Scrapper did not have a cold robot's heart, he was sure that he'd go mad, but Scrapper was not sure if he had a cold robot's heart anymore.

"Zrrt. Scrapper will always love you, Mistress Fi. And I will guard your memory."

He watched the growth of Hyrule City with a purely un-robotic sentiment: jealousy. The people and creatures around him lived, worked and played. A few ceased functioning – to be remembered and honored by those that remained. It seemed that no one remembered Mistress Fi but him – old faithful Scrapper… and Master Shortpants. Link was a source of Scrapper's jealously as well as resentment. He had children with the mortal form of Her Grace and they laughed and played with the other children of the Hylians. They would grow up and maybe create more children. Master Shortpants and the mortal Goddess would age and begin to break down, eventually to cease their processes and move onto places robots could not imagine - if such places existed in the first place. Scrapper would be there to watch it all, to see the humans populate the land leaving legacies and love behind and before them.

Master Shortpants was with his mistress forever and had a family-unit with her. Scrapper knew that all he'd have of Fi through the ages was a slat of cold metal. Perhaps, one day, she would wake up, but the probability of that was maybe 1 or 2% at best.

"Rrrt. The world moves on. Zrrt. We remain."

All the little LD transport-model could do in a world where he was the last of his kind was to take care of the remnant of the first, the last and only of her kind, waiting forever, or until the last of his processors had finally had enough of running and shut down into death-mode again. Scrapper wondered if he'd rust up again. He wondered if Fi would rust. For now, he had his lonely vigil and the flowers to place beside her.

Scrapper would do anything for Mistress Fi, for now and through the ages.

In time, he knew that, even as he kept his function and his vigil, he would be forgotten – just like the spirit in the sword.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 7**


	8. The Iron Lioness

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 8: The Iron Lioness**

To say that Karane had a vendetta against monsters would be an understatement.

Link gave his Captain of the Guard a winning smile as they stood side-by-side in the Ancient Cistern. Karane's men and women flanked their captain and their hero-king. The Ancient Cistern may have been a place that people came to for quiet reflection in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment, but being directly above a portal to the Underworld (it was suspected that this was the site that Demise had originally emerged from, in fact), it had to be "cleared" every once in a while. The cursed undead had a habit of clawing their way out of their hell to invade the world of the living, taking their personal hell with them. Cursed Bokoblins were what they were, while Stalfos were long-cursed traitor-knights. Some creatures were merely destruction-aligned wildlife, which would do little harm if left alone, but once disturbed, had to be dealt with.

"I'm with Zelda," Karane said to Link. "I question the wisdom of wearing the light-armor. I'm going to be plenty busy on my own, so don't expect me to save your butt, Mr. Hero."

Link was clad in his old adventuring clothes, that is, he was clad as a Skyloft Knight. The Surface Knights around him, Karane included, were wearing shiny, silver-colored armor over shirts of mail – heavier outfits designed by Gondo of the desert. They weren't good for flight, but they'd saved some lives when it came to encounters with the Surface monsters.

"These clothes served me on my Hero's journey," Link pointed out, "and they're easier to move in. Don't worry, Karane. I'll be fine. I've always been fine… well, more or less."

"Are we ready to march, Your Highness?" she asked, adjusting her light helm.

"You know you don't have to call me that."

"You like it better than 'Lazybones."

They both laughed, remembering their Academy days for just a moment. "Yeah. Let's go." Link said with a nod.

The company moved out into the various upper rooms of the Ancient Cistern. Karane went into a focused mode when she was met by various creatures.

"Thwack!" went her sword, scattering a Chu-Chu.

_Pipit gave her a proud smile when they'd wandered into the waterfall cave, looking for Link, who had last been seen wandering in this area. Her first dealing with a monster had her taking care of one that was sneaking up at the boy's feet. It was the first time she'd felt her twelve-year old heart flutter at a boy's smile…Were Pipit's eyes always that blue? _

"Thrust!" went her sword into the belly of a great spider.

_Laughing after sparring-sessions in Eagus' hall as their skills and bodies grew… She'd asked Pipit for some tutoring after class for just this technique, which she had trouble getting the hang of… His eyes were so fierce when he was fighting – even when it was just a practice-session. _

"Thwack!" against the leathered hide of a cursed creature wearing fabulous underwear.

"_She should go out with… me!" His wide eyes were full of uncertainty, even fear. As if she would reject him when he was the boy she'd been longing after since before they'd even started at the Academy. _

"Crack!" against dry rib-bones…

_Blood everywhere… spilling over a rent tunic and rent chainmail, onto the grassy ground…Brown freckles stark against paling skin… a cool hand with a light tremor in hers..."Stay with me, darling…" And the light went out in his eyes…_

"CRASH!"

To say that Karane had a vendetta against monsters would be an understatement.

She'd earned the nickname "The Iron Lioness" for her strength and the ferocity with which she dealt with Surface-threats. She'd taken on the job of Captain of the Royal Guard only recently, once she'd decided once and for all that she was no longer going to make a home on Skyloft. She also needed a stable position now that her wandering days were done. She'd recently completed her great work and decided that she really did enjoy working with Link. He and Zelda had given her a force to command, showing their trust in her abilities.

As she found herself smelling the smoke left behind by the demise of monsters and her armor covered in spatters of their fluids, Karane thought about events that had brought her to this place and time.

* * *

Her Wing Ceremony had been awkward. Every Wing Ceremony since the one that Link had won had been slightly awkward for the people of Skyloft simply because the ritual by which the winning knight was given the Hero's Sailcloth had been preformed back then, unknowingly, at the time, by the true Hero and the Goddess. No ceremonial Spirit Maiden felt like they could live up to the real one, which was made stranger in that many of the subsequent Spirit Maidens counted the real deal as personal friend. Queen Zelda of the Surface-Lands, for her part, considered it an honor for the Wing Ceremony to continue as it had for all the years of the Skyloft Academy and insisted that the tradition go on for as long as Skyloft felt a need for it.

What was even more awkward for Karane was something she'd heard had been awkward for many female knights: the subtext inherent in the presentation of the Hero's Sailcloth. The old tales of the Goddess and the Ancient Hero carried an implication, for many, of at least a mild romantic link between the two. One dodgy story (thought to have been written in Skyloft rather than the Surface) even had the cheesy poetic line "The Goddess fell in love with a mortal and it was that love that made her weep tears of silver, which scattered and flew off as fairies." It was debatable and debated, but Zelda and Link's relationship resulting from their adventures seemed to confirm a romantic tension.

Karane had flown hard and fast, her hunger driving her on, not to mention the hope that maybe, somewhere in spirit, a certain someone who'd won the race before was watching and cheering her on. She'd accepted her sailcloth from Orielle, upon the top of the Light Tower and wondered if she's have felt less weird if both she and Orielle were women of a certain persuasion – and then decided that no, that would have been even more weird, somehow.

If nothing else, Karane had been in love and, in the little time it had taken her to finish her Skyloft Knight's schooling, her wounds were still fresh.

She allowed herself to celebrate the afternoon and the evening of her victory, to bask in the love of her friends, to ride her bird around the sky after he'd been properly rested from the morning's events, to dance, to laugh and to drink perhaps a little too much of the celebratory wine and beer the Lumpy Pumpkin provided for the yearly event. Her parents had come from off-island and indulged her in hugs and gifts. The day of the Wing Ceremony was a day for happiness and she had it to the full.

The next morning, she was in the cemetery, kneeling before one of the foremost stones. She gently laid a small bundle of hand-picked flowers before a tombstone. The flowers were Karane's favorite – strange red blossoms shaped like hearts. She'd always found them cute. She'd asked Pipit what his favorite flower was once, and he didn't have one – it was "Whatever yours is." There was a long feather from her Loftwing in the bundle as well – he'd also said that he preferred feathers to flowers.

There was no body buried there, of course – just the skull of one of Pipit's long-ago ancestors, the first person whose name was carved on the memorial. The family had done Sky Burials, save for one unfortunate soul who'd fallen through the Cloud Sea. Either way, the marker held the names of a lineage. Karane traced the names.

"Pekin, Pidge, Draken, Gracielle, Cuco, Cormoran, Peregrin…"

"Pipit. Oh, Pipit, I did it. I made Knight. My race wasn't as exciting as yours… Cassowarin almost fell from his bird, though, but it wasn't as close. I smoked 'em, darling. I smoked 'em. You'd be so proud. I'm going to start my training on the Surface tomorrow… I know it pretty well thanks to traveling around with Link. The ceremony that Zelda came up with is a bit different. I'm going to travel to each of the temples she went to – to Skyview in Faron, the Earth Temple in Eldin, and finally to the Temple of Time in Lanayru. It's actually pretty safe to travel those roads now, but it's still a test… I am to bodyguard her playing the role of Impa. I think it will be fun… Zelda and I traveling together, having girl-talk like old times, and maybe I'll keep a keese or two out of her hair."

Karane knew that she and Zelda would not be alone. Others were coming with them, as it was a collective ceremony, but Karane would be the only person there to be earning dual-knighthood. The older former Skyloft Rescue Knights who were coming with the party were given Surface-Knighthood before the ceremony had been devised. Zelda had initiated it as a new Surface-custom just because the people living on the Surface needed some new customs to forge their identity. In other words, unlike the first time she'd taken the journey, Zelda would not be in peril. Still, Karane knew that Link being relegated to playing the good father and leader to the Hylian Settlement by staying home with their new baby was going to be hard on him.

Karane was touched by the name they'd given their son – Pipit. In her schoolgirl dreams, she'd wondered what children between her and Pipit the First would look like. They'd probably have been gingers (she really didn't know the genetics on that for sure) and they'd probably have adorable freckles and they'd play in the mud and probably get a good yelling at for doing things like setting the tails of remlits on fire just because she'd done that when she was eight. She and Pip hadn't gotten as far in their relationship as Link and Zelda had when he'd committed his last act of knightly heroism. They'd talked about it, but Pipit was such a gallant romantic that he'd wanted to have a public ceremony first so he could make her feel beautiful and like the empress of his heart that she was.

Pipit could be so cheesy… That, and they just weren't ready for it yet. They were busy and content enjoying each other's hearts and minds, and basking in the courtship.

In any case, Karane knew that he was serious about Them when he'd finally introduced her to his mother. She'd scolded him for not doing it sooner, because she knew she could have helped the both of them! It wasn't just the money issues, or a constantly dirty house… Karane had recognized Mallara for what she was. She'd had a cousin like that… someone who suffered a severe mental condition, put on a show of optimism to hide it, but ultimately didn't have much control over their emotions or their life. Karane had tried to explain it to Pipit as the "kind of depressed where you're full of energy and even have brief periods of happiness half the time, but are so swayed by your impulses that you come crashing down." Hence the spending and the dirt, a weird combination of a person not caring a lick about taking care of themselves that could only be explained by something not totally within their own control.

Pipit had wondered at Karane's clairvoyance. His mother was hell to live with, but he loved her and beyond being lackadaisical about his tuition-money, just wanted her to take care of herself. Just the fact that his wonderful girlfriend could help him to understand things a little better was a Goddess-send. Karane had even talked to the apothecaries about a particular kind of potion that helped with certain emotional conditions. Moreover, Mallara seemed to be motivated to take care of herself a little better by Karane's being in her son's life alone: She got into a habit of keeping their house clean for those nights Karane would come over for dinner. This continued with the birds that she and Pipit brought home, whom everyone knew would have a hard time breathing in dust. First for Karane, then for the little birds, Mallara began to care about life again in a way that wasn't all false smiles and absent-mindedness.

And it wasn't that she didn't care about Pipit, it's just that he was familiar, and had been at a loss as to what to do with her for so long. Seeing him very happy helped.

"You did die happy, I'll give you that," Karane sighed, tracing the name again on the memorial. "The way you always wanted… doing something stupid-damned noble."

Her attention was caught by the sound of footsteps behind her. She turned around to see a Skyloft Rescue Knight in a blue uniform.

"Oh, I didn't expect anyone here this time of day," he said, taking off his goggled helmet. "Ah, I know you! You're the new Wing Ceremony champion. Congratulations."

"Yeah. I'm headed down to the Surface, though. I have more commitments there than here, actually. I think I've seen you around some. You graduated the Academy, what? Four years ago? I've seen you around the grounds a few times…"

"Corvus," the young man said, giving Karane a smile.

"Karane."

"Lady Karane… or is it Sir Karane? A pleasure."

The shaggy-haired young man extended a hand to Karane to help her up. His hair was coal-black and he had most unusual eyes – red, almost like the eyes of some Surface-dwelling birds Karane had seen. He was a full-head taller than her and was skinny, gangly for a knight but not without some muscle to fill out his uniform. "Corvus"…where had she heard that name before?

"It's Lady. I know I could take the Sir, but I like the ring of 'Lady.' Thank you, Sir Corvus. Are you here to see anyone or just passing through?"

"I pay my respects to one of the graves here every week," he answered, "Although not always at the same time. I'm between shifts."

"That's sweet," Karane answered, "So, your father, your grandmother, someone like that?"

"No," Corvus explained. "I do visit grandfather now and again, although he died when I was five. I've taken up my weekly routine for someone whom I didn't know very well, I'm sorry to say. One of the knights who is no longer with us saved my life once – and that of my Loftwing."

"Oh… I'm… I don't come every week, I'm afraid… I'm back and forth to the Surface all the time. I'm here to say goodbye to my late boyfriend before my next trip."

"You put flowers before the memorial I came to see. Oh, my… it looks like we're here for the same person. You were Sir Pipit's lady?"

Karane began to sniffle. She tried stuffing down her tears, without success. "Y-yes. N-now I remember… you were one of the people who spoke at the funeral. Wait. Wait! I remember it all! It was the big news around the Academy and knight's barracks quite a while ago! Some guy's bird got wing-wounded by an Octorock and he slipped from his bird. Pipit swept in and caught him, then went back to guide the wounded Loftwing back to a pier… it was flying, but bleeding out…"

Corvus knelt before the marker and Karane's heart-flowers. "His bird caught me in its claws and then I watched as that kid got my bird's bleeding under control. Talked and whispered to it like he was magical. I could feel it in my mind how easy my Loftwing felt with him. I don't think either of us would be alive without that young man. First casualty of the Surface, such a pity."

Karane stood straight and tall. "That is why I wish to be a Surface Knight. I want to keep such losses from ever happening again."

Corvus turned and smiled at her. "I heard that your role in the story was one of an avenger. You destroyed his killer."

"Yes," Karane answered, "But it's not enough."

* * *

Karane quickly became known among the people of the Surface for the strength and fearlessness that she possessed. As a Surface Knight, she protected travelers. She joined with squadrons on missions to clear the way for new settlements and outposts. She soon was in charge of groups protecting travel and trading routes. She cleared temples of their shadow-dwelling beasts.

When the budding Hyrule City was attacked by an organized group of Bokoblins with a pair of Moblin leaders, she was there. When creatures started to arise out of the darker parts of the forest, she beat them back. Even the Water Dragon Faron became impressed with her skill and her merciless attitude toward the demons and their spawn. She'd become quite good at keeping humans in line, too, though no Surface Knight had yet a need to shed human blood.

For her strength of will and fierce attitude, she was dubbed "The Iron Lioness." Travelers automatically felt safe if they'd learned that she was leading their caravan. Link and Zelda trusted her to watch over their children.

And, in all of her travels, she had a personal project.

"Poor-will! Poor-will!" she called into the open air as she hid behind a bush in Faron. "Twee! Twee! Twee!"

A familiar person sidled up to her, giving her a look that said "Has my dear captain lost her hairy little mind?"

"Corvus!" Don't sneak up on me like that! If you'd really scared me, I might have gutted you on reflex! This is the deep woods. It's still dangerous here."

"Well... the camp was wondering where you'd run off to. It's nearly suppertime."

"And aren't you under orders not to follow me when I'm scouting? You may be my elder, but here, I am your senior."

"Fine, fine," Corvus said, throwing up his hands. "I won't tell anyone what I saw. What... is it that I saw, anyway?"

"Science," Karane answered.

"Science?"

"Yeah," Karane sighed. She showed him a little leather-bound drawing-book. "I am trying to call some of the local birds so I can observe them up close, draw them... get to know their habits. I'm probably more of a bird-expert than anyone on the surface or Skyloft at this point, but it seems like the work is never at an end. There are so many different kinds of birds here."

"I was... very amused at the tiny birds when I first came here," Corvus confessed.

"So was everyone," Karane laughed. "You should have seen Groose gush about them. He was a riot. That's why the first entry here is for the _groosia_ family of birds."

"Groose... he's that hermit who lives out in the desert at the Temple of Time, isn't he?"

"Last I checked. Who knows? The next time we go there, he might be gone through Time. That's his dream."

"I didn't know it was your dream to chase the little birds."

"It's not, actually," Karane explained. "It was Sir Pipit's. We worked together, you see. It was kind of a shared dream, but mostly, it was his."

"Do you regret following his dream instead of... well, your own?"

"I am following my dreams, Corvus. I am a knight. I have a sword on my back. I command a force. I still fly my Loftwing although I do most of my work on the Surface. My dream was always to be a knight and protect people and that I am. I enjoy the work I do with the birds – they're nice to watch, wonderfully intricate to draw, and I like the idea that I'm doing something that will increase the knowledge of the people. It's okay that it started out as Pipit's dream, because it's mine, too."

"Be careful of your dreams, dear captain," Corvus said. "In the end, the only life you can live is your own."

"Understood, Sir Corvus. I'll be back at camp shortly. Remember I like my bacon crispy."

* * *

At the end of the day at the Ancient Cistern, Karane's troops were dirty and tired. She was dirty and tired. Her king was dirty and tired. When they exited the ancient temple, King Link issued a new order.

"I propose, since we're all grimy and hot, that we strip down to our under-things and have a pool party!"

Karane laughed heartily. Link may have been her king, but he was still the same old silly creature he'd always been. This was a main reason why he was undisputed for the throne of the Surface-settlers. He was always one of the gang, never high and mighty. Everyone did as ordered, because they wanted to. A splash-fight in the cool of the grotto's waters was just what the tired soldiers needed. Karane kept both shirt and pants on, though she laid her armor carefully upon the shore. After having a relaxing swim and getting playfully dunked by Corvus, she swam up to Link as he sunned himself dry.

There was another thing she liked about her king – he wasn't afraid to show his scars. Being stripped down to his dripping pants, marks on his torso left over from past battles were visible.

"You fought well in there," Link praised, not looking at her. His eyes were shut against the afternoon sunlight. "It makes me feel even safer, now that you're taking a residence in the castle."

"Remember, it's not for you, Lazybones. You can take care of yourself plenty. It's for your kids. I like them. I want to keep them safe."

"The ankle-biters?" Link laughed, "You're the great enemy of all monsters and the reason why you took the position I offered was... for my little monsters?"

"Yep."

"Either way, I'm glad you took the job. You won't be doing as much traveling... Zelda kinda sorta wants you near... in case there's a war or something. That Bokoblin army incident spooked her. I hope the lack of travel is...okay...with you?"

Karane twisted and rung out her long, undone hair. "Well, I have something I wanted to present to Your Highnesses. Last week, I flew out to Gondo's and he finished my run."

Link looked at her quizzically. "Finished your run?"

"You know," Karane explained, "on that new machine he built... the one that people are using to print the territory newspapers. I just received the honor of having the first book made with the thing. It is being mass-produced, a first run of one-hundred copies."

"Really?" Link asked. "So that's the big secret the big guy's been keeping from me? Who knew?"

"I don't know if it's complete, I mean... some new species might be discovered, but I think I've got it as close to complete as it will be in a generation."

"You... you actually went through with it? And finished it? Oh... I thought you'd given that thing up years ago, what with your duties."

"Corvus is the only man under my command who knows I've perfected the art of twittering to attract small birds."

"What does he think of it?"

"He thinks it's sexy."

Link's eyes went wide.

"That's another thing, Lazybones. I wanted to ask the blessing of the Goddess and the Hero over us. Corvus proposed to me."

* * *

The winds whipped on Skyloft as a Royal Surface Knight stood before a memorial marker in the cemetery. Karane gently laid a bouquet of heart-flowers on the ground before it as well as a small book: _Sir Pipit's Guide to Surface Birds. _

It, of course, had an illustration of a pipit-bird on the cover.

"This is going to be the last time I come here for a while, darling," Karane said with a soft smile. "You moved on long ago. I will always love you, but... it is finally time for me to move on now."

She walked away, dove off a pier, called her Loftwing and made for the portal to Faron Province.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 8**


	9. Those Who Fall

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 9: Those Who Fall**

Ever since the existence of the Surface had been made known to the people of Skyloft and the other sky-islands, there had been one thing on the minds of its citizens: The fates of those who fell from their sky-suspended lands.

Some of the members of families who had lost people hoped that maybe, just maybe, their loved ones might have survived the fall through the cloud-barrier. As unlikely as it was, the Surface-settlers, especially the Surface Knights, kept their eyes and ears open any time they forged new paths through wild country. King Link said that he didn't think there were any survivors, for the Three Dragons spoke of no humans living in their lands when he'd sought audience with them.

Lanayru the Thunder Dragon was no help at all, as he was only to be found in a place of meeting in the deep past. He kept it a secret how deep into history his area was – Link suspected that it was a time before the city that would become Skyloft had been sent into the sky. Eldin the Fire Dragon doubted any fragile human would want to make camp in his blighted lands, even if they failed to drop right down into a pool of active lava. He claimed that the only sapient beings interested in the place were the Mogmas and the Gorons, for similar reasons. Both sought rocks and minerals – as treasure and artisan materials and as food, respectively. He was sure no lone human who was not the Chosen Hero could survive there for long. That left Faron, the Water Dragon. She'd told him, simply, that she had seen no humans between the War of Hylia and his appearance and had left it at that.

People had hope, but most knew that the sheer physical forces inherent in falling from as great a height as Skyloft would likely render someone unconscious by the time they hit the Cloud Sea – or that the Cloud Sea would knock them out, itself. A person who had blacked out would not be able to unfurl their sailcloth. The settlers came down to the Surface upon their Loftwings by gliding down through the open portals. Link had ridden down close to the portals, skimming just above the cloud-barrier when he'd been upon his quest – not to mention that he was under a certain degree of divine protection.

Just to test things, Link experimented on himself. People said that it went beyond bravery to just plain foolishness, but he really wanted to know if someone could, at least hypothetically, survive a fall from Skyloft-height. His queen and his guards stood by, both above and below the Cloud Sea. When he was near a portal, Link jumped from his Crimson Loftwing and fell a few degrees short of the portal, making sure he'd hit the cloud-barrier. Zelda, waiting just below, caught his unconscious body on the back of her bird as he fell through. When he came to, he talked of feeling like he was going out right as he hit the thick clouds.

He did this a few more times to solidify his hypothesis as a grounded theory, after which Zelda, having enough, smacked him and forced him to stop using himself as a test-subject. No amount of pleas "for science!" could change her mind about her husband's risk-taking for something that appeared obvious. She knew that his heart was in the right place, though. He was hoping to give the grieving some hope that it was possible to find some fallen Skylanders alive down in the Surface-Lands. If he could make it through the Cloud Sea just once without blacking out, there was hope that some fallen Skyloftians could have survived to live in secrecy.

As it stood, there was no reason for that hope. In fact, the grim fate of one fallen person was discovered in the Lanayru Desert. A group of people who were seeking gold and stray veins of Timeshift Stone-ore found the bones of a man in tattered Skyloft Knight Academy senior clothes atop the desert-mummified remains of a Loftwing with a few copper-colored feathers still attached to the bones of its wings.

This unfortunate person was someone in memory and in record – a young knight named Griffin who'd ridden a rare copper-feathered Loftwing. He had suffered an accident during his training in the spiral charge move. His bird had run headlong into one of the asteroids on the training course and had cracked its skull. Griffin could have been rescued by one of the knights on standby if he'd jumped off his bird, but his hand had gotten caught beneath the riding belt and he fell with it. His fate was known for sure now. He'd been blown by the winds into the desert and had no way to slow his descent. He'd likely succumbed to massive internal injuries due to an impact that a dead Loftwing ultimately made a poor cushion for. His desiccated corpse lay atop that of his Loftwing. His family was notified of the find and poor Griffin and his bird were given a Surface-burial together.

There were other fallen beings whose fates the settlers of Hyrule might have been better off not knowing.

Sometimes, a Loftwing fell without its rider. Wild Loftwings who never partnered with a rider likewise fell from the sky at times. There was the legend of the secret island where old and sick Loftwings went to die, as well as birds that were depressed from the loss of their riders (hence the Skyloft Knights' aerial funeral tradition), however, not all simply "vanished from sight." Some birds that were ill, or had been injured by the wildlife in the skies would simply fall down into the Cloud Sea. The usual fate of a Loftwing that had lost a rider to a fall, in fact, was falling itself after it had circled the area it had lost its partner in until exhaustion set in. Knights tried to save bereft birds from this fate, but steering a grieving bird back to an island was an almost impossible task.

The settlers of the Surface soon learned that various fates awaited fallen Loftwings, depending upon where they landed. In the desert, the dead were usually sucked up and concealed by the shifting sands. A few, like Griffin's bird with him on it, landed hard upon stone. Birds that landed in the forest were greeted by curiosity and some mourning by the Kikwis, who saw in such large birds similarities to themselves – as well as the fact that they were gentle creatures who generally loved all life (at least all life that was not predatory towards them) and found death to be a sad thing. In Faron Woods, fallen Loftwings were buried or left to the processes of the forest.

The fate they faced in Eldin's lands inspired some of the Hylians to wish for war.

While King Link and Queen Zelda had good relations with the Mogmas and some Hylian tradesmen found them to be powerful business partners, the welcome they'd once received at the Royal Wedding had worn thin and dwindled into non-existence over the years. Many of the settlers and the children that they had and were raising came to think of the Mogmas as savages. They were seen as dirty scavengers, untrustworthy sly types, and their shape inspired terms like "beast." Some even held them to be a form of monster, especially after a particular part of their diet was learned.

The Mogmas were ground-dwellers that subsisted on roots and tubers, but being opportunists, enjoyed meat when it came their way and there was no bigger source of pure animal protein than a great bird that fell from the sky into their lands. Roasting what they thought of as "big cuccoo," was no problem in a land of living rivers of lava. They were not the sort of creatures that passed up an easy meal, particularly when it landed upon their scorched earth.

When they learned that the birds were sacred to the new Hylian settlers, they did not quite understand. Why were these new people demanding that they perform rites over some dead wild bird? Why did they say that eating them was forbidden? If the gods provided them free meat, were they not to take such a golden opportunity? Who were these Hylians anyway to barge in from the sky and try to tell them what to do? Wasn't it their right to feed their wives and their warrens of children? Why did these weird people think it was "cannibalism" just because they rode on the backs of the things? Weren't a few of them eating horses now although some of them rode them?

Some of the artisans, craftsmen and people of industry that had come down from the sky otherwise found the Mogmas more of a problem than a people. While the Mogmas were expert diggers, the majority of them did not want to work for a parceled out salary offered to them, preferring to keep their mineral and treasure prospecting as personal free enterprise. Some partnered with Hylian tradesmen and purchased Hylian goods with their found treasures, but most of the Hylian prospectors found these creatures to be competitors and found them generally in the way when they wanted to build rail-cart systems and processing centers into the fiery mountains. The Mogmas, meanwhile, did not like the idea of having upstarts trying to uproot their centuries-old settlements.

Tensions mounted. The Mogmas went to their leaders over the question of whether or not they should try to drive the sky-folk back to the sky. The Hylians went to their leaders regarding whether or not "extermination of the moles in their new garden" was in order.

The king and queen of Hyrule were, of course, in favor of peace. Zelda favored negotiations to reach a reasonable solution, for, as always, she was guided by wisdom. Link counted many Mogmas as personal friends. Some Hylians questioned his loyalty to his own people, for he seemed to them to be "too much a lover of the other races," and "too sentimental in regards to the journey of his youth." They thought him too much of an idealist – a gallant Hero – but out of touch with the realities of a blossoming society.

There was another unpleasant reality of Hylian frontier-society, something that had been completely unforeseen by former Goddess and former Hero, as well as those that had fallen from the sky like stars. Having been isolated for so long in the sky, various diseases had become specific to the sky-islands and some of the diseases of the Surface had become specific to the Surface. Biological agents that would give the natives of one country a small case of the sniffles were devastating to natives of another country whose bodies were not accustomed to those particular strains.

After meeting with King Link and Queen Zelda and conducting some trade and knowledge-exchange with their people, the red-haired people who'd come from across the Sand Sea dealt with the first epidemic they'd had in decades. People skilled in medicine both among their people and among the Hylians did what they could to help. In the end, the tribe had only lost some of their very old and very young, but the Hylian royals felt every loss. The red-haired tribe chose to cut off trade and remain in isolation.

The shining-scaled upper river people from one of the remote regions near the water-sea - the Zora, as they called themselves, fared better. Like the Kikwis, their physiology rendered them immune from most Hylian ailments. Some of them got sick on Hylian food, and vice-versa. Some Hylians, however, grew to enjoy raw fish with just the right amount of rice and the right kind of sauce. There were arguments among Hylian biologists as to whether or not they were related to the Parella or to Faron. For the most part, they were seen as "friendly, but strange," and the marked lack of illness-exchange made relations with them go smoothly.

No one was really quite sure why Hylians who'd had extensive dealings in Eldin were getting sick with Mogma ailments when the Mogmas has such an animal-like physiology as opposed to humanoid, but it soon became apparent that something they carried that was minor to them was transferable – and deadly – to Hylians.

The Hylian war-drums began beating out a thunder when the king got sick.

* * *

Link was hot and dizzy as he held on tight to the riding belt of his Loftwing. He could feel his grip weakening and willed his fingers to keep curled around the strip of leather. He could hear his personal guard behind him. Captain Karane was on her bird. Others rode below on horses. They'd stayed three days in Eldin and met with Tubert – Lord Tubert now, chosen as High Chieftain sometime after Guld's retirement for the good head on his shoulders regarding business.

Link recalled with a bit of disgust how Pumm and Kina basically thought of old Guld as a slave. Guld, for his part, did not seem to mind it much just because he enjoyed the Sky and liked to impress people with his digging skills – it was almost as if he was unaware of the low status the people of the sky had given him. What had left the bitterest taste in Link's soul was the fact that he'd made the arrangements for this relationship himself only a few years and a lifetime ago.

He'd started feeling sick this morning, but thought nothing of it. Not everyone caught the Eldin Sickness. Karane was as healthy as a horse. The King of Hyrule thought that, perhaps, it was just the heat of the volcano getting to him, and then the temperature change between the Eldin area and the air around Faron. The painful itch in his throat? Perhaps that was just from the geothermal smoke and ash in the air in Eldin. He always felt a little off when he went to Eldin. It was as familiar as the sand that got in his hair whenever he visited Lanayru. Link was weak and tired even though he'd slept well – maybe it was just residue from a long journey or a side-effect of the psychological stress of trying to prevent a war?

He landed in the courtyard of the palace. Zelda ran to great him as his Loftwing landed and he slipped off him. He swayed and Zelda caught him.

"Link!" She exclaimed, "What's wrong? You're sweating and pale…"

"Something I ate?" Link offered before utterly collapsing into his wife's arms. He could hear the boots of his guards approaching them.

"Come on inside and rest," Zelda insisted. "I'll get you some water and maybe some soup. Link, you're so warm."

"So are you," Link joked.

"You're sweating."

He shivered.

"Oh, dear… Come on inside."

"Where are the kids? I… I don't want them catching what I've got if I have anything."

"They're out in the yard with Fledge and the horses."

"Good."

Link's accompaniment marched inside with him and Queen Zelda. She dismissed them, dispatching a messenger to go fetch a physician as she helped her husband to their bed. He stretched himself out and Zelda helped him strip out of his tunic and mail. She drew a blue-goat wool blanket and a quilt over him to help him with the chills. She brushed her hands over his face, his ears, his chest and his neck.

"It's probably just a cold," Link said. "Maybe just a reaction to the air in Eldin."

"Either way, I've sent for the apothecaries." Zelda said, "If all you need is a potion, you'll be okay, but you worry me. You practically fell off your bird."

"Remember that week when you got that really bad head cold and I practically camped out in your dorm?" Link reminisced. "Karane didn't like that I was spending so much time in a girl's room, but your father didn't mind because I was just bringing you soup and making you laugh with stupid jokes."

"And trying to sing to me off-key," Zelda laughed.

"You sing much better."

"This is more like right after you fought Demise," Zelda sighed. "I was taking care of you, remember?"

"Yeah."

"And I'll take care of you now. You usually get over colds quickly."

* * *

Link did not recover quickly. Over the following week and into a second week, his cough worsened and he grew progressively weaker. He shivered and lay in so much pain that he could not sleep until utterly exhausted, after which he slept for long stretches, his breathing so shallow that his queen feared it could stop at any time. Zelda put spells of protection over herself and the children. At the same time, the children were forbidden by their caretakers and the recently-formed Council to visit their father for fear that the spells would fail. The heirs, after all, were important. Zelda stayed by her husband's side during the day, although she slept in an adjoining room so as to give him the comfort of having the entire bed to roll and cough up phlegm in.

Luv paced about the room as Zelda rubbed a concoction of crushed leaves from a local plant on Link's chest in gentle circles. This stuff had a pungent, fresh smell and was meant to aid his respiratory functions. For his part, Link was half-asleep, aware of the presence of his wife and vaguely aware of the existence of Bertie and Luv. Bertie was busy sprinkling sparkling blue butterfly wing-dust and pouring rendered insect-venom into a jar of unfinished red fluid.

"Eldin Sickness," Luv said matter-of-factly.

"No…" Zelda said, shaking her head. "No… please…"

"I'm afraid so. It comes with a fifty-percent survival rate for our people. There's not much to be done but to keep him hydrated, try to get a little protein down him every once in a while, and wait it out. We can give him the breathing-salve and a bit of air-potion to open up his lungs, and we can give him red potion to ease the fever and body-pain, but there's no cure or sure remedy. He's at a threshold now."

"A threshold?"

"Yes," Bertie spoke up. "What my wife means is… he's either going to get better or he's going to get worse. We've seen some of our patients with this recover, and some die. Our dear Link is at a point where if he starts perking up pretty soon, he's on his way to recovery, but if he starts getting any worse than he is now, funeral plans are in order. I'm sorry, but that is the way it is. I've improved the red potion… it's normally used for injuries. I'm afraid it cannot really heal this, but it might help… a little. I don't want to get your expectations too high."

Link weakly reached out and took the bottle from his hand. Shaking, he brought it to his lips and drank, getting about half of it all over himself and the sheets. Zelda helped him to steady the bottle.

"Th-thank you," Link said after he'd finished the draught.

"You should try to survive," Luv said bluntly. "Not for your own sake or even for us. We do like you, kid, we always have, but… people are talking about war. Your death might be the tipping-point and I just don't want to have to deal with it."

"W-wouldn't it give you more…b-business?" Link darkly joked.

"Not the kind of business we want. Clearing out monsters is one thing, but wars among people? Pheh! People become monsters. People lose their minds. And guess who has to patch up the most horrible injuries?"

"So, you do see the Mogmas as a people, then?" Zelda asked.

"Eh- eh!" Bertie spoke up, "Why wouldn't we? Some of them have become loyal customers."

"Far be it from us to get involved in politics," Luv continued, "especially since we don't even live here full-time, but our daughter wants to move down here for good, so we care about what goes on here, just a little."

"It is good for us to know the feelings of our people – directly from their mouths. Thank you." Zelda nodded and stroked Link's hair.

"Folk…don't…d-don't treat us the same any-anymore," Link wheezed. "St-status…makes them sh-shy."

"Weeeell," Luv explained, "You may be the king down here, but my husband and I still think of you as that goofy kid who went on a quest and bought lots of wares from us."

"S-saved my life."

"I'm sure we did, just like you made us rich. We'll leave plenty of potions for you, but, really, it's just a matter of chance now. I am sorry."

"I put a little extra rendered hornet-venom in all of the red potions," Bertie added, "It should, eh… help you sleep. Don't take too much at a time, now, no more than one bottle twice a day."

After the apothecaries left, Zelda remained with Link, waiting for him to fall asleep before resuming castle business.

"D-disease like this…" Link began, "I know it's a p-part of the n-natural order, but…I-I can't help but wonder…about-about...the Goddess' role with it."

Zelda gulped down a wave of tears. "If you're wondering, no… Hylia did not invent such things. She did not understand the hardships of mortals, but this kind of thing was part of the order of the old gods. If Farore's life was left to flourish without checks and balances to keep the cycles going, the world would become static. Some dangers were always meant to keep the populations of certain beings in check… even Hylians."

"Always heard…the w-world was about b-balance."

"That's right," Zelda said giving his hair another long, soothing stroke. "Even if we do not like the outcome." She winced, remembering a deep dream of long ago, a pawn of a heroic soul and a promise of rebirth.

"C-could be the residue of Evil. A p-part of Demise's curse on us."

"I don't think so," Zelda whispered. "You aren't cursed. You're too much of a blessing to be under a curse."

"Wh-when did you get so corny?"

Zelda gave him a soft and cautious giggle. "Are you feeling sleepy yet? It's strange… You're my Sleepyhead but you can't sleep when you're sick."

"It's h-hard when you hurt."

"I know… I know, but it is the best way to heal."

"Zelda?"

"Yes, love?"

"If… if I don't survive… I think I want to be buried on the Surface. Somewhere near here. I am more a person of the Surface than of the Sky anymore. And s-see… Great, I'm shivering again… see if you can keep my bird from dying of grief. Just because I die doesn't mean that he should, too."

"Link, stop talking like that. You are going to make it. I know you. You're too strong not to. You've survived… much worse things."

"It would be the way it would happen, wouldn't it?" Link sighed. He then coughed and regained himself. "It would be the way it would happen… the Hero, the one who dodged the most clever of traps, felled the biggest and most fell of beasts… done in by a little bug he caught on a peace-mission."

"It's not going to happen that way. You are going to live and watch your children grow up and become very old with me." Zelda noticed his soft, ragged breathing. He'd fallen asleep. "Goodnight, or… good-afternoon… Sleepyhead. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

She kissed his warm forehead and left the room.

* * *

Karane was walking along the wall of the modest Hyrule Castle upon her night patrol. It was called a castle, but it was only had two floors at present as they were all that was needed. There were four floors counting the basement and the attic. The ground floor was where the Council met and where the king and queen met with their people and the upper floor was where the royal family lived. In the land areas around the palace was a stable and riding grounds, a combat-training ground, a courtyard and a garden, all of which were enveloped by the wall. The wall was open at the courtyard with no gate, allowing all of the people of the settlement to come in and enjoy the garden.

The starry fireflies danced about the garden in the early evening. It was a quiet night. Karane alternated her duties, but preferred night patrol when she could get it. It was nice to be alone with one's thoughts on a summer night. She stiffened when she saw a shadow deftly leap along the opposite end of the wall. She rushed along the walls' foot-path, keeping silent. It was probably some kind of night-bird or perhaps one of the children out of bed and doing something stupid.

Prince Pipit sometimes had nightmares and would come out along one of the balconies or out to the wall to clear his head. He was twelve-years old now, and so did without the closer supervision given to his younger sister and little brother. Sometimes, he came out to Karane when she was on patrol and talked with her. She assured him that she was there to protect him from any danger. He liked talking with her about swords and about Loftwings. He was one of the few Surface-born children who'd called and partnered with one. He'd told her once that he found her strangely comforting, that even before she started working full-time around the castle that she felt "very familiar" to him. He was a good kid and Karane had felt her heart break the other night when he'd come out to meet her and was talking about how he was afraid his father was going to die. He'd said that he would take up helping his mother and protecting everyone, but wasn't ready to say goodbye to his papa yet.

Karane followed the path of the skulking shadow. As she neared it, it became clear that it wasn't the young prince. Torchlight caught the glint of metal and then the shadow disappeared into the upper floor of the castle, leaping up into a specific window.

Karane pumped her legs. She dashed across the wall, jumped down, took the guards' entrance into the castle and ran up the stairs, taking several at a time. She drew her sword and ran to the master bedroom. She could hear Link's labored breathing even before she burst through the door. A shadow loomed over the sleeping king's bed. Moonlight caught the tip of a sword, poised over the sick man's form.

"Stop right there!" Karane roared. The sword came down just as a suddenly-awake Link startled, rolled and fell off the bed.

Karane charged forward. The intruder's sword clashed with her own. "Meddlesome wench!" the stranger hissed. She danced and parried. Her armor protected her from a blow aimed for her heart that she deflected into her shoulder. It scraped across metal harmlessly. As the assailant pulled it back, however, the blade grazed her cheek.

Link, meanwhile, spoke the spell to bring the torches up with his raspy voice and staggered to the wall beside his bed where he kept his sword. He managed to grab it, but he stumbled to his knees in dizziness. He stood, trembling. Zelda came in and he immediately staggered toward her, putting himself before her protectively, struggling to hold the sword up.

Meanwhile, Karane and the stranger fought and the rest of the castle knights came up behind Zelda. Before they could do anything, however, Karane grit her teeth and put her blade through the intruder's stomach. The tip protruded from his back. The Captain of the Guard wrenched her blade out of the body and panted as she watched it fall. The man breathed out a death-rattle and closed his eyes. Zelda yelped and buried her face in the shoulder of Link's pajamas.

Karane stared, sweating and bleeding from the cut on her cheek. She'd slain many monsters with a vengeance, but this was the first time she'd ever needed to take a human life.

* * *

"His name was Sakon," Karane said at the bedside of King Link, giving him her report when he was well and aware enough to hear it. Link was sitting up, propped up on pillows. "He was a petty thief."

"A thief?" Link asked hoarsely. "What would a petty criminal want with the throne?"

"He wasn't after the throne, Link," Karane sighed, "Or even particularly after power – at least not in our kingdom. You were more… like a trophy buck to him."

"A trophy buck?"

"Upon investigation, we traced him to a criminal gang made up of both men and monsters. To kill an important figure bestows a certain degree of status in the criminal underworld. Sakon did not want to become the king of Hyrule, but he did seek kingship among his gang. He didn't make it fair, though – with you so sick. The kingdom knows of your condition, so he took the opportunity to not have to fight you."

"Cowards don't play fair," Link coughed. "Was he working alone on this?"

"We think so. We managed to get most of his buddies into holding after ferreting them out."

"Zelda and I had the basement dug for storage, not dungeons. We'd hoped we wouldn't need anything more than a cool-down tank for the occasional rowdy drunk – like on Skyloft."

"Well, Lazybones, you did run a pretty peaceful kingdom for a good decade. That's more time spent in Paradise than most monarchs could hope for, especially with the blossoming population between births and settlers continuing to come down from the outer sky-islands."

"You don't look so good, Karane."

"Look who's talking."

"I'm feeling better. I think I'm on the mend."

"Link, you look like a corpse. You do seem a bit more comfortable, though, and you aren't coughing as badly."

"Like I said, I'm beatin' this. You… you just don't look good. You're pale. You don't look like you've gotten much sleep."

"I've heard that the first time you kill a man, you're supposed to feel sick. It means you still have a heart. Something like that. I know I'll be okay. I'm the Iron Lioness, after all. I've got Corvus with me and the ghost of a fallen knight in my memory telling me to keep it together. It's easy for men to become monsters, not so easy for monsters to become men."

"Thank you, Karane. If you hadn't come to my rescue, I would definitely be dead."

"Get your rest, Highness. Listen to Zelda. Keep mending. I didn't save your skinny butt just so you can turn on me and die."

"You take care of yourself, too. I want my captain sharp-minded."

"Understood."

* * *

**END CHAPTER 9 **


	10. The Sage of Happiness

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 10: The Sage of Happiness**

There are many different kinds of "crazy" in the world. Some would contend that the entire world is crazy and that the difference between sanity and madness within any world is nothing more than labels and a matter of that which a given society finds acceptable. Among the non-typical thought-patterns and behaviors are the things that are cause for fear or sorrow – the crazy that leads to a person acting out violently, or that which is quiet, but harmful to the person who experiences it. Various forms of depression, for instance, are weights upon the soul and are nothing but suffering.

Perhaps the crazy people who suffer the most are those that are crazy, but sane enough to know that there is something wrong with them. They know society's disregard for them. They can hear the condescension in even the kindest of voices. This is in addition to carrying the terrible weight of their own burdened minds.

Then, there is another kind of crazy – the kind where the "sufferer" remains, despite popular consensus, unconvinced that there's anything wrong with them. If they are very lucky, they do not suffer at all. While some that see visions are plagued with demons, others see angels. While some are crushed by the weight of the world, others see potential and dreams. Maybe some people are only called crazy because they are capable of dreaming bigger dreams than the rest of society, leaving the rest to sit and stew in their own insecurities.

As Kukiel grew up, she grew comfortably into a rather positive kind of crazy.

Jakamar and Wryna moved down into the Hylian Settlement early on, with their daughter. They stayed on in Skyloft for a little while to take care of a friend, Mallara, after she'd lost the only family she'd had left to tragedy. When Mallara had decided to try to live on her own again, the little family moved down to the Surface for good. There was more work down here for Jakamar as a carpenter than was available in the Sky, for his hands were needed to build a city. While other hands worked, as well, he'd become Hyrule City's chief architect.

Kukiel was proud of her daddy, and her mommy, who did lots of pretty art. She got to go to school with Uncle Bats most days and she kept hush-hush on his secret because she knew that other people weren't like her – other people would be afraid of him if they knew he used to have flappy bat wings. Kukiel never understood that – why people would be afraid of him just because he used to look different, but she knew she had to protect Uncle Bats, so she was quiet. Besides, secrets were fun.

There was the time she saw the little mouse-people in the woods and no one believed her but Uncle Bats. Other kids called her "crazy," but she knew what she saw. The Kikwi knew what she saw too, but they said that the little mouse-people were afraid of getting eaten by the mean-monsters, just like they were afraid of getting eaten by people before they met Mr. Link. Even Mr. Link couldn't see the tiny people, even though he was really good and protected everybody. Uncle Bats said that he was too much of an adult-Hylian, that the little people only showed themselves to special children. He said that maybe if Link were a little child like her, he'd see the mouse-people because he was pure-hearted like she was.

Kukiel learned early on that she was "strange," but that was okay, because her strangeness could make people smile. Aunt Mallara, for instance, was so sad when she came to live with her family on Skyloft. The poor lady's son had gotten hurt so bad that he died and was carried away forever by his Loftwing. His name was put on the family marker in the graveyard and Aunt Mallara had no family anymore. Kukiel had dreams. A nice boy in yellow talked to Kukiel in the dreams she had of the soft-snowy Skyloft and the soft-snowy forest and said that he was alright and he didn't hurt anymore. He said he'd been reborn, but could still talk in dreams to people who were sensitive so he could let everyone know not to worry. Kukiel told Aunt Mallara her dreams and hearing them made her happy, but also made her cry.

Kukiel never cared what people thought of her when she'd dance barefoot down the street where she lived on the settlement's southern edge, or when she chased fireflies and butterflies well into her adolescence, her being too old in the judgment of many for such things. She eventually stopped seeing the little mouse-people, but didn't feel bad about that because she knew they felt like hiding, especially as Hyrule City grew. She'd sit at the base of the statue of the young man she saw in some of her dreams and paint her toenails in bright colors – a different color for each toe. She'd lace up her boots and visit the statue of another person she saw sometimes in her dreams but had never met in life. She'd say "Hi!" to the robot that lived in the temple sometimes.

There were days, after she'd gotten big, when she'd help Mr. Batreaux teach the children at his daycare and school. She'd make daisy-crowns for the little girls at recess and she made a few for the boys, too. Not many little boys wanted them, but a few brave souls didn't care if her handiwork made them look silly or "girly." Kukiel thought being "girly" was fine and dandy.

Kukiel talked to everything. She talked to remlits just like she had when her family lived on Skyloft, though they only mewed back. She talked to the Kikwis without hesitation. She played tag with Gorons, even though it was rather dangerous, as they'd chase her down by rolling themselves into big boulders and had a way of not knowing their own strength. The young woman developed an easy friendship with Mogma tradesmen, although her family did not approve.

The young woman wasn't sure what she wanted to do for a career. She thought about helping her Uncle Bats and taking over the school for him if he ever retired. She took to helping her Aunt Mallara in her weaving and sewing business, making clothes for people. Some people wondered if she should keep house with the apothecaries or even find her place in the palace dungeon, locked away before she could do anyone damage simply because, wherever Kukiel went, she only seemed to be halfway in reality. She'd never harmed a soul and was a gentle soul, herself, but some aspects of the way she talked, or spun around singing to herself in the open square with a flower-crown on her head, or the fact that she kept pet keese was vaguely threatening to some individuals.

She saw, heard and felt spirits all the time, she'd said. They lived in the forest and were of all kinds, not just the kind that revealed themselves to Heroes. Some spirits were those of slain monsters that regretted their fates – and most of those were consumed by revenge, hatred, and material attachments. Kukiel swore that the trees had their own spirits and did not need to talk because they were too busy growing and living. She saw the dead in dreaming and living ghosts all around her. She said she could sense the true nature of people – between those that thought that the world was a mechanism and those who saw the world as a big, living body. She knew that there were many more colors of red than just one and that the Goddess Din liked red, the Goddess Nayru liked blue, and Farore's courage was found in many shades of green. She also knew that though the white-Goddess had been Zelda, a portion of her spirit had never left the natural world.

She was a joyful figure in Hyrule City. Some people thought of zany young Kukiel as spiritually connected, a prophetess or even a Sage (since she had no element to connect to and hadn't shown any particular power, people favorably disposed to her started calling her the "Sage of Happiness" for her upbeat ways). However, not everyone liked her particular preaching. It wasn't so much that she was a "heretic," since Queen Zelda seemed to like her and invited her to the castle to play with her children sometimes – it was just that her words were strange. Many who prided themselves on being grounded in logic found her wild dreams and the fact that she wouldn't shut up about them in public or polite company either frightening or a pain.

It seemed the assertion that she was either a visionary or deluded was a matter of labels and opinions – none of which the girl apparently cared about. When she declared herself "Empress of Nature" was when even Zelda started to worry.

In the end, whatever they'd thought of her mind, most would say that Kukiel was the freest person they'd ever known. She was strange enough not to care about appearances. She was strange enough to see the good in every creature, and, at the foothills of the mountains of Eldin, she was strange enough to try to single-handedly stop a battle.

When that incident happened, she was staying in one of the small Hylian mining-villages that had cropped up. Her family was there to see the great fire-mountain. Uncle Bats was there, too, because he wanted to collect some igneous rocks as samples to show his students. A fight broke out among the miners, between Hylian workers and the Mogmas at work there. Kukiel had been awakened by the commotion and wandered out to the edge of town in the rising light of dawn.

"Whoom!"

A bomb went off, sheering off a portion of one of the area rock formations.

"Go on and get out of here! That was a little taste!"

Kukiel didn't know who was shouting, a human or a Mogma. "Stay back, honey," her mother said, grabbing her wrist. "It's just a worker's dispute. It'll be over in an hour or so."

"But, mom, someone set off a bomb!" Kukiel protested. "Is this town going to get blown up?"

"No, dear. Your father will get the Mogmas back in line."

Kukiel stared down at her mother. Perhaps it was her father's genes, but she'd grown tall and was about a head taller than the slightly-built woman. "People are gonna get hurt!" She said. "Maybe if I do something, everyone will play nice."

"Kukiel! Don't!"

Kukiel ran to the front lines, where men were drawn up in a line on one side and Mogmas were drawn up on the other – some of them peeking up out of holes in the ground. Everyone was yelling and shouting insults at one another. Some were brandishing sticks, crowbars, stones and bombs.

Shouts of "Beasts!" and "Invaders!" sounded back and forth. No one seemed to be willing to make the first move, either toward reconciliation or violence. As it was, it definitely looked like violence was the greater possibility.

"You monsters made our king sick! He's going to die! We should kill your leader to make it even!"

"You'll lay your filthy hands on Lord Tubert over our dead bodies! Thieves! Invaders!"

"We'll make our wives coats of your furs!"

Kukiel slipped out from among the men, the long and colorful robes she wore dragging and swishing on the ground. She positioned herself in the dead center of the space between the arguing Mogmas and men.

She began to sing.

"_Oh, youth, guided by the servant of the Goddess, unite Earth and Sky and bring light to the land… _

_Oh, youth, show the two whirling sails the way to the Light Tower… and before you a path shall open and a heavenly song you shall hear…" _

She went on to sing other parts of the sacred song, parts bespeaking courage, love, and of the peoples living together in harmony.

Everyone who had been shouting paused to listen to her. Kukiel had a strong and beautiful voice. A few men sniffled. One of the Mogmas was crying until another Mogma smacked him for being overdramatic.

Kukiel knelt down on the ground. "I'm not moving until all of you get along, okay?" she said.

"Get out of the way!" one strong man shouted.

"Un-uh," Kukiel replied, shaking her head. "You all have to play nice."

Someone threw a rock, which hit someone on the head. That was the tipping point that triggered both of the drawn-up sides to descend upon one another like packs of angry wolves.

They left their pacifist bleeding.

* * *

"Thank you, Uncle Bats. I can manage."

"You're still in quite a bad condition," he said, stepping aside to let her crutch up a set of steps on her own.

Kukiel was bandaged up from cuts, still had some bruises, a cracked bone in her right arm and a limp in her left leg. She still felt a bit of pain in her ribs from where someone had taken a heavy wooden stick to her side. She had some stitches in and a bandage over a cut across her left cheek. She was better off than some who'd been in the riot, however. A young man named Heron had been killed, as well as two Mogmas, Geo and Fossa.

A week after the Foothills Fracas, as it had since been called, Kukiel was visiting Hyrule Castle, upon request from the king and queen. They wanted to talk with her about the riot and they wanted to give her an honor for her bravery, although what she'd tried to do had ended in failure.

She met on a private balcony close to the royal bedroom. King Link was still sick. He was on the mend, but it was not a wise idea for him to be up and around too much, even around his own castle. Zelda had brought him out to the balcony from the room in a rather nice wicker chair with wheels. He kept a wool blanket over his knees. He smiled at Kukiel as Batreaux helped her to sit down in a chair across from him.

"Oh, my…" Zelda said, gazing upon her. "I wouldn't have called you here so soon if I knew you were this badly hurt! Oh, Kukiel, I'm so sorry!"

"It's alright," Kukiel said cheerfully. "I've got Uncle Bats to help me. I'm not hurt that bad. I'll heal soon, 'specially with potions."

The queen sighed and rubbed her knotted brow. "To think this land has made our people so savage, to beat up on a little girl…"

"I'm not little anymore."

"Yeah, but…"

"I still call you Link and Zelda, not King and Queen. And it's not the land; it's just that people forgot how to be nice to one another. The people don't play nice with the Mogmas, 'cause they look different, like animals. The Mogmas don't want to play nice because people are being bossy to them in their own lands. It doesn't make sense to me."

"Me, either," Link said with a cough.

"Well, a lot of it does have to do with economics… people making a living…" Zelda said. "There has to be a way to resolve these disputes."

"People don't like that Link's sick," Kukiel added. "He's gonna get better, isn't he?"

"Yeah…" Link assured, "I'm gonna get better. I've been getting better. The doctors have said that I'm out of both the contagious stage and the danger zone. I have nothing to do but to get better." He smiled. "Don't worry about me, Kukiel. I'll be fine. You worry about yourself, okay?"

"Okay. But I heard someone tried to kill you, Link."

"Karane stopped him." He looked to his Captain of the Guard, who grunted an affirmative and remained stoic from her place behind him.

"That's good. I know what might cheer us all up! The Scream-As-Loud-As-"

"No, don't!"

"Just kidding, Link" Kukiel laughed. "You think I'd do that with all your guards around?"

"Yes, I would, actually." Link laughed in earnest now, until he started coughing. Zelda pounded his back until he regained his breath.

"Silly Link. I'm worried now, though. People's spirits are restless. Everyone's mad because people got killed in the riot. Some people are mad that I got hurt and are blaming each other. I… I'm sorry I got hurt. I shouldn't have gotten involved."

"No…no…" Zelda said. "You did what you thought was right, and you tried. In any case, you made people think. That's why we're giving you an honor today."

Zelda took Kukiel's good hand and pressed a small, golden medallion into it. It had a design with a swirl on it and a red feather attached to it.

"Goddess Farore's symbol?" Kukiel asked.

"Uh huh," Link explained, "And a feather from my Loftwing. It's a medal for courage. It's the same kind as I gave to Captain Karane. It's for uncommon valor."

"I'm gonna put it on a ribbon for my neck and wear it!" Kukiel exclaimed. "Thank you! It's so pretty!"

"Keep being yourself, Kukiel," Link admonished, "but be careful out there and take care of yourself."

Kukiel flashed him a grin. "And when things aren't right in the world, I'm gonna scream as loud as I can."

* * *

**END CHAPTER 10 **


	11. A Portrait in Oil

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 11: A Portrait in Oil **

A dark brown Loftwing landed gently upon desert clay. Its rider patted it on the neck and slid off it to investigate a small rusted heap. Gondo knocked on the remains of an ancient robot with his knuckles and with a small tool. He gritted his teeth and grunted as he scraped the rust off the edges of a hatch and pried it open.

"Hmm. Looks promising." the brawny man said to himself, "Not as much sand in this one and the wires still have most of their insulation." He wrapped some leather straps around it, gathered up its hands and bound it up together. He strapped the heap to a leather rig on his Loftwing that he'd created just for this situation, which was a regular one for him.

Gondo had only ever revived one ancient robot; Scrapper, whom he'd let live his life in Faron with a new, self-created directive to care for the Master Sword. The mechanic had worked diligently in attempts to revive more of the lost technology, but it was an uphill climb. After studying areas shifted outside of Time with the Timeshift Stones, he'd been able to figure out how to get some of the old machines up and running in the present age, but hadn't any success, sadly, with the ancient robot civilization.

Scrapper had only needed a quick lubrication of his inner workings and some careful buffing with oil from the flowers that had once grown in this region that had gone extinct long ago – at least before Link had re-discovered the Surface. Now, there was a garden of the flowers, taken outside of Time, living by Hylia's Temple and a garden in the backyard of Gondo's home. Gondo kept and bred the flowers carefully to produce oil even as he used oil from other sources to lubricate both resurrected technology and inventions that he'd devised. The fossil-oil he'd found some wells of proved to be quite effective for many of his inventions, though he did not like the smoke that came off it when it burned.

The old family-robot had been simple to revive once he had the right kind of oil. The ones that Gondo found in the desert were proving to be stubborn. It wasn't the little guys' fault, really, it was the desert itself. LD-301S Scrapper had been kept up on Skyloft, in storage in the family home and shifted between homes, but in as favorable conditions as one could hope for, treated as a beloved antique. He'd broken down and rusted, but he didn't nearly have as many problems as the rusted robots down in the desert did.

The "wild" robots were in a fair state of preservation, given their age, due to the dryness of the desert (Gondo imagined that any robots that had broken down in the Faron area in the last Age would have rusted completely away by now due to the damp forest conditions), but the ravages of being in the open air even in dry conditions were still too much for them. Years of relentless heat had warped some of their parts, allowing sunlight and the occasional rain into gaps and fissures to destroy some of the more sensitive workings inside them. Of course, the grit and sand had gotten inside their workings and damaged them, apparently beyond repair, but Gondo still tried with models he'd found in the least damaged condition.

He'd left many where they stood, having taken a good look at them and seeing them too far gone for him to even begin to work with. He felt inadequate – particularly in regard to the more sensitive parts of them. He felt like he was a standard battle-wound surgeon or potion maker asked to crack open somebody's skull and take a look at their brain. Indeed, he knew that some of the little panels with a forgotten language written in lines, terminals and shimmering bits were, indeed, the brains of the robots. Many robots that he felt too far gone to save, he scavenged from for study. Gondo felt a little ghoulish when he thought about all the dissected "brains" upon one of his work-tables. He looked at them with magnifiers and special glasses, feeling hopeless to understand the lost technology of the gods. He did not think that he could assemble or reassemble a robot's "mind" anymore than he could create or reassemble a human mind. He was a "doctor" who worked with the guts, not the brains, even as he hoped he would find a body or two to resurrect like he had done with his little buddy, Scrapper.

His suspicion was that with most of the broken robots – the minds were intact while the bodies were not, especially since he could hear a subtle electronic hum when he was near them that dissipated upon the wind. Gondo couldn't tell if he was going crazy or if he was really hearing something. The delicate circuitry was busted in most of these models, so he'd heard that hum even with the most rusted and sand-scraped models that by rights shouldn't have had any "brains" left. The concept struck him through with horror and made him want to bring the bots back to life as soon as he could, if at all possible. Then again, he wondered…if any of the poor things had been fully conscious while trapped within their rusting shells, would they come back insane? Gondo was pretty sure he'd be insane after spending a few centuries stuck in the sand – even if he'd managed to spend most of that time in sleep mode. He didn't think Scrapper was conscious during the time he'd spent broken down and even then, he'd come to life mighty surly.

"Hey, girl," Gondo said, patting his bird's neck, "Let's land down there. We haven't seen the kid in a while."

The brown Loftwing circled and descended into the courtyard of the Temple of Time.

"Hey, Groose!" Gondo called, sliding off his steed. "Groose?" He received no response. He hadn't seen the kid's bright red hair upon descent – it's usually how he spotted him. This is the first time Gondo had been scavenging in this area for about a month. He liked paying Groose little random visits when he was around and seeing how his progress on fixing the Gate of Time was coming.

Gondo stared up.

The great gear moved, driven by smaller, black gears that were only halfway visible, suspended in the open air. The Gate of Time was working. It moved in a slow rhythm. Its surface didn't look much different from the last time he'd seen it – a huge clay thing with inscribed archaic symbols, the same color as the sands around it, only now, the cracks in it that had been glittering with little cubes of chronolite were whole and flat, tawny clay without separation.

Picking his jaw up, he stepped toward it. "Groose?" he called into the open air. That's when he felt his booted foot step on something. He looked down to find a large, round quill beneath it – the base of a big Loftwing flight-feather. It had a red and blue tip, was white in the middle and had a black tuft at the base - a feather from Groose's bird. If he hadn't noticed it, he wouldn't have seen the little note beneath it, held to the ground with a rock for a paperweight. Gondo picked it up, read it and scratched his head.

"_Outta Time. _ Groose." _

"Hmm," Gondo muttered, pocketing the note. He found a couple of small, black Loftwing body-feathers leading something of a trail up to the Gate of Time. Gondo ventured to touch it. His fingers caused a pulse of blue light to flow over the surface of the gear in patterns of lines and squares – not much unlike the etchings on the insides of robots. Gondo pressed, and while the light and patterns pulsed again, the Gate remained solid and his fingers remained in the present era.

Gondo knocked and tapped on the Gate and got the same results. "Maybe only the first user can use it then," he mused, talking to his nearby Loftwing for want of companionship. "Or maybe he did something weird with it and it only let him have a one-way trip. I'll miss him if that's the case. Not a bad kid – turned his life around right…"

Gondo mounted his bird and looked at the spinning Gate as she flapped off the ground. "I guess time will tell if he finds a way back."

* * *

"Go on! Get!"

"Waaahahahaha! Screee!"

"You know I ain't afraid of you! Get out of here you laundry-stealing moochers!"

Gondo came home to his place in the desert to find his mother very active in their backyard. The family home was a modest affair – a small house and a workshop both walled with adobe and roofed in corrugated metal (it kept the house cool and Gondo had figured out how to derive solar energy from it). The desert winds were dry, which meant laundry that was hung out between poles in the dusty yard dried very quickly. Even with the washing machine he'd built, keeping clothes clean was quite a chore, especially as they had to ration water out here.

And, of course, there were the local Bokoblins. They really weren't much of a threat. Link had cleared out the truly aggressive ones long ago, and most of them had been creatures of the deep past, anyway. The tribes of the creatures that were left, however, like their more warlike brethren, had a peculiar obsession.

Underpants.

Bokoblins loved undergarments. It seemed to be a driving force of their culture – insofar as monsters could have cultures. They wore tiger-striped and leopard-spotted briefs and loincloths that they spun and wove and dyed themselves. They also liked stealing from the laundry-lines of honest, hardworking Hylians.

This wasn't the first time that Greba had sighted them outside the kitchen or bathroom window trying to take things off the clothesline and had come out to beat them off with a stick. In fact, she kept a sizeable and sturdy rug-beater just for this purpose.

The Goddesses help you if you tried to panty-raid old Greba.

Gondo rushed up to his mother as the raiders ran off, sore and gibbering. "Mother! You aren't hurt, are you?"

"No, no. Nasty things. Oughta get me a sword. One of 'em nicked off with one of my sets of flower-print bloomers!"

Gondo imagined a red Bokoblin running around in his mother's lacy, puffy bloomer-pants trying to threaten their warrior-king Link with a club or a sword. He blinked – then he burst out laughing.

"What are you laughing about?" Greba said, smacking him in the ear, "That's not funny. It's too much trouble to go into town to trade and where else am I going to get another set? Your insistence on living out here for your busted old robots…"

"I got another one to work on. I really think I can bring this one back to life!"

"Eeeh. You could make a fine living closer to the city with your machines, but it's all about the robots with you. They're all busted. Hunks o' junk. The one was just the Goddess' luck."

"I'll be in my workshop if you need me. You take a rest. I'll take care of the red guys if they come back."

"Bunch of brutes! I can handle 'em fine on my own… don't need one of your dangblasted machines for that."

The truth was, despite her grumbling, Gondo's mother actually did like the machines he'd built to help them around the house as well as the things that were helping the people of Hyrule City and the other settlements. He knew that his mother just liked to complain – it was a hobby of hers and who was he to deny an old woman her hobbies?

He had to admit that she had a point about one of her favorite subjects of complaint – the notable lack of grandchildren in her life. Gondo had never had much success with women. He'd always found dating or even asking a lady out on a date awkward. Strangely enough, he wasn't into men, either – it wouldn't have created children, but Greba would have been pretty happy to see him bonded, anyway, just to have an expansion on the family. It had been a minor dream of hers to see her son at his wedding ceremony, engaging in a sealing of something non-mechanical, something of human passion - in nice, white clothes.

Gondo was more or less married to his work. He supposed that he created objects just so that he wouldn't have to create children. He didn't think he'd make a good father. His passions were grease, gears and gauntlets. Greba had remarked once that she wondered if she'd birthed a robot instead of a boy. Maybe one day, Gondo thought, he'd find the "right kind" of woman – one who shared his love of grease and gears – to marry and produce a passel of grandkids for his mother with, but he doubted it. Time was slipping away from him, after all.

He used a hook-staff to slide open the main skylight of his workshop. The desert sun illuminated sparkling legions of dancing dust-motes and glimmered off the edges of metal tools and works in progress. The workshop was larger than the house, with mostly open space. Large rectangular tables, some with tops of metal, some with tops of old, scarred wood stood in the center of it. A device resembling the ancient Beetle that King Link carried rested on one table. Gondo had upgraded Link's device years ago – along with many other things. The Beetle had excited Gondo the most, having only seen something like that in an old book of "fairy tales." It has been relatively easy to figure out how to improve its capabilities. He now wanted to build even better versions of the device and find a way to mass-produce them for the public. Such a useful little go-and-fetcher was tragic to only have a single unit of.

A rusty mining cart was overturned in one corner of the workshop. Gondo couldn't for the life of him figure out how to repair the unit that made it hover along tracks. He was thinking of modifying it by fitting it with grooved wheels and seeing if he could alter the old tracks to accommodate a simpler version of transport. Such things could be most helpful to people in regards to the moving of goods and even of passengers if he could figure out a propulsion system that didn't rely as heavily on the energies of Time… perhaps oil-combustion or steam… or elemental magic…

Another corner of the shop held the first printing-press he'd made. It was a bit clunky and the type had to be set by hand. He'd actually had some help designing that part of it. Wynra had developed some fonts with her unique artistic eye. Karane had developed a few clean, basic fonts of her own for him to forge into type for the press. She'd been very particular about that book on birds she'd been working on. Gondo had improved upon the press' design and a smoother-working press was in use in Hyrule City. It worked well for the Surface, employing simple technology where magic was not needed. – He'd already earned enough rupees for it alone that he did not need to worry about taking care of himself and his mother for the rest of their lives.

Gondo put much of his profit back into new work. He was a creative man, obsessed with the new – and the old – and a person in constant need of projects to work on.

"Muffin? What are you doing here? Shoo! Daddy's gotta work now. Get!"

The small calico cat that had been snoozing comfortably on one of the tables – right atop some of Gondo's drawn diagrams, rose in response to his nudging, arched her little back, yawned, and jumped down off the table. Muffin wandered toward the entrance to the main house. Muffin was not a remlit, the pet commonly kept by the people of the Sky. Remlits remained quite popular even on the Surface, where, in some areas, they took on a fierce nature by night that the remlits of Skyloft no longer were subject to. Muffin was a different species of small feline that were discovered to be quite common Surface animals. Easily tamed, it was as if they knew a bunch of saps who'd give them food and shelter just for being cute right from the start. Gondo wondered if Muffin's kind had been the pets of their ancient Surface-dwelling ancestors. She didn't turn at night, for what it was worth. Her behavior remained steady by day and night. It mostly consisted of napping in places where she ought not to nap.

Muffin had been scratching the bases of the mannequins again. Gondo kept a few simple wooden torsos on poles up around his workspace. They modeled shirts of chainmail and scale-mail. He'd made various improvements to the metals they were crafted from. This was part of his work for the Hyrule Surface Knights as well as the Skyloft Knights. He'd been trying for years to hit upon the right combination of strength and lightness. It was quite a dilemma. In order to be light enough so as not to burden a Loftwing in flight, armor had to be basic – the kind that could withstand blows from small monsters and the typical human fighter.

One shirt of mail was special and not of Gondo's making. It was one of the old Skyloft models and rested upon a painted mannequin with the locations of various bodily organs marked out on it. It was gashed on the right side, the result of one of the strong Surface monsters. It was study-material. The brave kid who'd died in it years ago didn't have a chance. From where the mail and been struck and torn, it was likely that not even the strongest of available potions could have saved him. Vital structures had been damaged and though he'd lived long enough to have last words, he had not suffered long.

Such was the danger on the Surface. Gondo had been given a description of the creature that had made the wound in the chainmail through to fragile flesh. By the mail, itself, he'd calculated the force it had taken to make such a blow as well as the angle at which it had been dealt. It was supernatural – as one might expect of the swordsmanship of an animated skeleton-creature with no muscle or sinew to keep it working, let alone wield its blade. Gondo had developed a simulation apparatus in the form of a metal, mechanical arm, powered by hydraulics, that could mimic such dangerous forces.

He remembered one time that he'd shown King Link and Queen Zelda its workings when they'd come to see him test the armors he'd been developing. As the mechanical arm, armed with a typical broad-bladed sword, slammed into a mannequin and test-shirt - their little boy and screamed and squalled. Gondo had apologized profusely, thinking the child had been frightened by the loud noise. The boy kept grabbing at his side and claimed that he had a stomach-ache. Zelda had to take him outside to throw up. Link said that he was sure his son would get a kick out of all the mechanical stuff. Their little girl certainly did. Gondo had suggested earplugs, for it got "a mite noisy" in the place sometimes.

When mother and son had returned, Gondo continued to feel sorry for failing to warn them adequately, for the kid looked pretty shaken - almost as if his machine had slammed its sword into him.

As it was now, the armors for the Surface Knights could withstand almost any physical force while being light enough to comfortably walk around and fight in. Visiting Skyloft Knights, however, were warned to be as much on their guard as any un-armored civilian.

Gondo had been making swords and shields for the Surface Knights, too – quite a lot of them lately. He'd also been getting orders out of the mining settlements in Eldin of all places. He had no idea there were that many monsters left that needed to be guarded against. That work was all basic smith's-work and he worried about it a little. He liked the idea that his wares were the best around for protecting people from the dangers of both Land and Sky, but he wondered… were Hylia's people on the way to becoming a people of conquest?

He laid his little rusted robot-buddy up on one of the wooden tables and proceeded to crack its hatch open to investigate its innards. He heard his mother come in just as he was scraping at tiny rusted gears with a fine pick-tool. He took a paintbrush dipped in flower-oil and gently brushed various areas, watching some of the rust fall away from the metal. It was miraculous stuff, this oil.

"How long are you gonna be in here?" Greba asked. "Do you want any supper? Getting' to be skin and bones, you are."

"I'll get a sandwich or somethin'. Say, Ma… we might want to go into town pretty soon to get you some new bloomers."

"Why? I've got plenty of underthings, just so long as the red brutes don't come back anytime soon. Too much trouble."

"Well, I think there's something I ought to tell some folk," Gondo answered, not looking up from his work. "You know that brawny red-haired kid who lives out by the temple ruins in the desert?"

"Yeah? What of him? Crazy as you, most like."

"He did it. Er… I think."

"He did what?"

"It, Ma… What he was working on, the Gate of Time."

"Are you trying to give an old woman a heart attack?"

"Not at all. I just dropped down over there today and there was the Gate, spinning and everything. It looked kind of dead…though. I touched it and nothing happened, but I found a note and it looks like wherever he went, he took his Loftwing with him."

"You don't say? Now, don't you get a fool-notion to go on after him."

"I won't, Ma. I'm not even sure what happened, just of the signs I saw. He might be back. He might not have ever left… he could have just flown off to get supplies or something."

"I'm too old for time-travel," Greba grumbled as she left the shop, "Unless it can make these old bones young again."

"Time doesn't mean much in the desert, anyway," Gondo called, looking back toward her silhouette with Muffin at her feet.

He rested one of his large hands upon the prone body of the rusted robot. For just a moment, he was sure that he'd heard and felt it hum.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 11 **


	12. Lonely Souls

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 12: Lonely Souls**

Love leads people to strange places. Some love becomes strange or is unusual by definition, while those uninterested in it are the strangest beings of all. Love leads to broken hearts and, for some - love is only found once the heart has been broken.

Between the Heavens and the Earth, two broken hearts found mending in one another.

* * *

Days at the Skyloft Knight Academy were filled with study and the usual dormitory antics. The two female students received quite a bit of attention from the male student body. Groose, Cawlin and Stritch talked often of the relative attributes of the two girls. Stritch wasn't much for these conversations except to nod occasionally in agreement with whatever Groose had said. The "females" that interested him the most were ones that had six legs. Groose definitely liked the "girly" type – that is, Zelda - who kept her hair long and down and showed up to all but the most physically demanding of classes in a dress.

Cawlin, meanwhile, thought Karane was hot. She was almost the opposite of Zelda – always in pants, enthusiastic about sword-training and quite good at it. She was rough around the edges, somewhat "masculine" while retaining more than enough female charm to get any heterosexual guy's blood pumping. Maybe Cawlin liked the idea of a girlfriend who could kick his rear (kinky!) or maybe he was looking for a tigress to tame. In any case, he wrote his feelings down in a letter he was too embarrassed to deliver directly. He knew that his handwriting lacked a certain artistry, but he was the top student in the language classes and was, to his embarrassment when asked to stand up in front of class and deliver, the best poet.

Cawlin had noticed, with some fear, Karane getting a little doe-eyed whenever the hall monitor walked her way and how she'd cast glances his way whenever he shared classes with them even as he, himself cast glances at Karane. Pipit was too high-and-mighty for her, though, or for anyone. He was a weirdo only interested in birds and top marks – a workaholic. He didn't have the poetic soul Cawlin had – he knew it! Cawlin was passionate, a romantic. He'd even created some carefully-crafted graffiti to proclaim their love. She'd take one look at his words of love and immediately fall for him. If only he didn't stammer and sweat as soon as the thought occurred to him to actually hand over the letter.

Maybe he could just leave it on a desk and hope she'd find it? No… someone else might read it, or, with the paper shortage going on of late, some idiot would take it into the bathroom and use it as toilet paper. He couldn't risk that. This must have been why he was so desperate that he asked Link for help.

Link the star-eyed dreamer. Link the goody two-shoes only at the Academy because he was riding on his dead parents' trust fund. Link, the kid who got the special bird he obviously didn't deserve. Link, who turned the heads of all the single women in Skyloft and a few of the not-so-single ones because he looked so downright girly himself. A few guys, too. Link who got the easy-rides. Link who got away with everything. Sleepyhead, Lazybones Link.

Cawlin knew that he was digging to the bottom of the barrel when he chose to ask Link for help.

The stupid idiot would probably use his letter for toilet paper.

Instead, Cawlin wound up wishing he had.

What kind of guy just up and automatically realizes his love for a woman in a split-instant. Really! Cawlin had just about had Karane in the palm of his hand with his written words of love when Pipit – that jerk – came into the room proclaiming that he'd just realized he was in love – and Karane fell for it! Pipit may have talked a lot about honor and duty, but he was a thief! Nothing but a cruel, petty thief!

He had no right to Karane!

Cawlin spent his time in Groose's empty room to cogitate. Groose had been off on his own business for some time. The last thing he'd said before disappearing was something about going to rescue Zelda because Link was a skinny wimp who was the wrong choice for the job. Whatever. Cawlin couldn't stand to cry in his own dorm, which he shared with Stritch. In fact, since Groose had vacated his dorm, Cawlin had taken it over.

To be able to sleep at night without the incessant chirping and humming of caged insects and to be able to wake up in the morning _not_ being covered in ladybugs or swarmed by butterflies was quite refreshing. Also refreshing was being free from the stench of alcohol. Many on Skyloft made the mistake of thinking that Stritch cared for his insects the same way that the children of the island did – as pets. Stritch was an entomologist, which meant that, sometimes, he wanted to add specimens to a pinned collection and that meant killing bugs by putting them in jars with a cotton swab or cloth soaked in something to asphyxiate them with. This was the fate of many of the insects sold to him during his nightly backdoor deals. Yes, Cawlin knew about those. It was the only way that freak could get his hands on rare specimens and it would be to his great shame if anyone found out he wasn't catching them himself.

Cawlin spent his time steeped in hate. He imagined a great many deaths for Pipit. He enjoyed the mental image of the jerk calling his bird only to have it not come… attacked on his night patrol by angry remlits… getting cut in half by some monster…

Cawlin had taken his rejected letter, balled it up and tossed it in the toilet.

* * *

Fingers drummed upon a counter. This job her father had stuck her with was unbelievably dull. Peatrice only had one regular customer – the most handsome boy on the island… beautiful, proud, heroic Link.

He was so kind, too… perhaps too kind. He really did string her along. In her giddy dreams, she imagined that he was coming by her counter just to talk to her and to gaze upon her beauty. She imagined that the trinkets that he had for her to put in his storage locker were just an excuse to come by. His easy smile brightened her afternoons, even when he'd come in scuffed and dirty, with scrapes and small wounds. Somehow, those made him even sexier – rugged.

He was just like the Hero of the legends. He'd said something to her once about being on some kind of mission and that some of the items he was storing with her were from distant lands.

Peatrice had convinced the boy to meet her at her home. He came by her counter _so _often… He just had to have a motive beyond business.

Link dashed her dreams expertly and with all the tact and grace of an idiot.

He was an idiot! Was he blind? She was a beautiful young woman, ready to throw herself at him and all he had to say was "You store items." The nerve! Was that all she was to him? How could that be after all the smiles they'd shared?

Her father was happy. She did not want her father to be happy about this. She couldn't remain his little girl forever. Peatrice made sure to remind stupid, stupid Link how beautiful she was becoming in her lonesomeness, in hopes that he would change his mind about their relationship.

It was another dull day when the pudgy, short boy came by her counter. His eyes were puffy and he had snot coming out of his nose. He struck her as a repulsive little troll. He was one of the Academy kids, wasn't he? Yeah. He was always hanging around that tall kid with the bowl haircut and the huge guy with the bright red pompadour. To Peatrice's surprise, the boy actually wanted her business.

"Hey," he hailed her in a nasally voice, "How long do you keep things? Do you auction off items in storage if someone doesn't come for them after a while?"

"Um, well," Peatrice began, "Normally, we hold onto people's treasures indefinitely."

"What if someone doesn't pay their locker-fee?"

"We do not charge a fee – it is a service of the Bazaar. I am paid by the council of merchants. We rarely sell anything out of the lockers – only by the request of the item-owners, or as an estate-sale if they pass on and the next of kin fails to claim their treasures…"

The kid rubbed the back of his neck. "Um, well… Do you have anything like that? I'm looking for something special that I know I can't buy at a regular shop."

"I can check," Peatrice said hesitantly. "What kind of a piece are you looking for?"

"This is gonna sound weird," the boy said, "but I need something that can put a curse on someone."

"A curse? Why would you want something so ghastly?"

"The jerk really deserves it, alright?"

"I'm sorry, but we don't sell black magic here."

"Do you know someone who does?"

Peatrice sighed in disgust. "You really are desperate, aren't you? Tell me, who do you want to curse and why?" She leaned over the counter, resting on her elbows, looking down at the stout little fellow. "Wait… I think I know you… Cawlin, right?"

"Yeah. I need to teach a punk a lesson about barging in when he's not wanted. So, are you going to give me something cursed or what?"

"Well, I do have something called a 'cursed medal' but I don't think it really does anything important. I can't give it to you, though."

"Why not?" Cawlin whined.

Peatrice got a faraway look in her eyes. "It's… it's Link's."

"Wha? What would Link be doing with something cursed?"

"I don't know," Peatrice said dreamily, "but he must have it for some important reason… A guy like him has to be turning it to a noble purpose."

"Pah! A guy like him? You should fork it over, because I've got a purpose for it ten times nobler than anything he's got in mind!"

"And what noble purpose is that?" Peatrice asked sarcastically.

"That rat-bastard Pipit – do you know him? He's the guy with the big nose in the yellow uniform, struts around like the king of the world… He stole my girlfriend. I need something to cut him down to size and a cursed medal might just do the trick…"

"You're a little weasel, do you know that?"

"He waltzed in and shattered all of my dreams!" Cawlin, in spite of himself, began to cry.

"Oh, here!" Peatrice spat, handing him Link's medal. "Link only ever took it out of storage once. I don't think it does anything at all – it just looks creepy."

Cawlin dried his eyes. "You're just… handing it over? Really?"

"Link needs some payback, too," Peatrice said bitterly. "He passed me up. He'll regret it eventually – one way or another."

* * *

The mustard-yellow tunic hanging on the Skyloft Knight Academy's laundry-line on wash-day was unmistakable. Cawlin slipped the medallion into one of its pockets. He proceeded to observe Pipit over the coming days, as much as he could without being seen.

Right around sunset one evening, he found himself sitting at Groose's desk doodling a little cartoon-drawing of boots with double-knobbed cartoon shin-bones sticking out of them surrounded by fat, happy remlits. He even gave one of the remlits the honor of wearing the floppy hat on its head. He was hoping to see something like that this evening – or at least a certain knight scratched up - when he'd decided to take a little stroll in the fresh night air. Surely that cursed medal would bring its holder cursed creatures. Cawlin snickered to himself, thinking about all the bad luck that cursed item had brought to the hated Pipit.

As he rounded the path by the Bazaar and wandered along the Academy's upper grounds, he caught snatches of a conversation. One voice was Pipit's and the other was Link's.

"You wouldn't believe the luck I've been having!" Pipit exclaimed.

_Ooh, here it came! _

"I'm finding MONEY, everywhere! And last night, over in those bushes, I find a Goddess Plume! Do you believe it? I was able to take the night off last night and take Karane out for a nice dinner… and whoever my mother hired as a housecleaner – I told her she could go ahead and hire him or her again if she wanted to."

"That's wonderful, Pipit!"

"I think I owe it all to this good luck charm Karane must have slipped into my pocket."

"Wait… I recognize this. Where did you get this?"

"Like I said, I found it in my tunic pocket after wash-day."

"This is mine… or at least it looks like something of mine. Pip… has anything weird been happening to you lately? Like… _bad_ luck?"

"Um, well… I haven't been able to open any of my belt pouches. That's pretty aggravating. I've had the good luck charm for about a week and there's nothing in my pouches I really needed except for a jar of pumpkin soup I'd picked up for a lunch…back…then. You know… I kind of stopped caring and forgot about it when I started finding all the money."

"Give it to me. I want to take a good look at it again. The person I got it from said something about it being cursed. I think he may have gotten it backwards, though… he's kind of an eccentric."

"The Fortune-Teller?"

"No, not him. Someone else. You wouldn't know him, trust me."

"You aren't involved in anything…shady… now are you, Link? I wouldn't want to have to report you for the good of our knight-school."

"He's the most innocent man I've ever met and I say that with all honesty. Just give me the medal for a moment."

Cawlin watched as Pipit passed the gleaming medal into Link's hands and Link scrutinized it under the moonlight.

"Hey! I can open my pouch again!"

"That must be what it does!" Link proclaimed. "I guess it seals up all your pouches as it … helps you find money? I can't open any of my pouches now. Strange. I guess if you keep it in storage or pass it along to someone else, it doesn't take effect anymore."

"If it's yours, Link, you should have it back."

Cawlin watched as Pipit pulled a rather fuzzy jar out of one of his belt pouches and watched it magically enlarge.

"The pumpkin soup?" Link asked.

Pipit suppressed the urge to vomit. On reflex, he threw the jar over the nearest pier.

"I… think I'll put this back in my storage locker in the morning," Link said.

Cawlin seethed. It seemed like neither he nor the cute girl at the Item Check got what they wanted in the end.

Wait. Did he just think of that harpy as "cute?"

* * *

Time passed and Peatrice found herself at the wedding of the Hero, Link. It was a lovely ceremony, truly a "fairy tale" event. There was one problem, however.

She was not the bride.

She'd accepted with a heavy heart that people were not something one could collect like items. Sometimes heart medals were broken.

Peatrice's was not the only broken heart there. While misery loved company, it was hard to be "happy" about something like that. She sighted the bitter little troll who came by the Bazaar every now and again looking off at a pair of dancing knights – the one that he complained about whenever he paid her a visit and, apparently, the girl he had loved and lost. She looked over at the bride and groom, then back over to the short kid. He wasn't really all that bad looking, when she thought about it. He wasn't particularly gallant and he spoke of women (and people in general) with a selfish air, as though people were property like items for him to collect.

She found herself talking with him, anyway. They were both lonely souls, after all.

* * *

Even as people moved to the Surface-world, life resumed on Skyloft. Life resumed…and it didn't.

Peatrice sat across from Cawlin at a table at the Bazaar food court. Everything had been closed yesterday, but business as usual resumed today. Birds had to fly and people had to make a living.

"I didn't _really_ want him to die, you know… not really," Cawlin said. His eyes were dry but his voice was laced with a unique bitterness. Peatrice had watched many people come and go by her counter and had listened to their conversations. She'd become something of an expert people-watcher. Cawlin spoke with the air of someone who'd had a wish granted but had not been careful what he'd wished for and regretted it.

"You didn't have any control over it," Peatrice offered. "He didn't even have the cursed medal. It's back in Link's locker and he'll probably never come to my counter again to get it back."

"Yeah, but I imagined so many death-scenarios… back when I was still mad. It's just… it's just weird!"

"Maybe you aren't really admitting to your true feelings about the situation."

"Eh, I don't even want Karane anymore, anyway. Too scary – a woman being a monster-fighter. I heard she utterly destroyed the thing that got Pipit. It makes me feel all shivery. A girl should be forthright, but… not like that… I don't know. I don't really know what I want in a woman, really. I guess I just thought she was kinda cute… for a while."

"Maybe you shouldn't even be thinking of that right now. I've learned that I can't count on a hero to come and sweep me off my feet. Heroes like beautiful, radiant women… not a working-class stiff like me…"

"You don't look bad," Cawlin said. "You've got a little mole… it's really pretty cute. And you sigh over the stupidity of the world the same way I do."

"Yeah, the world can be pretty stupid… but what are you doing trying to use lines on me for? I didn't know the Academy-kid that well, but wasn't he your friend? You just watched your friend carried off into Eternity by his Loftwing yesterday."

"He wasn't my friend!"

"And Link wasn't my hero. Hey, I know a way for us both to let off a little steam. Skyloft is pretty depressed right now, but my father is running his sword-game today. If you're a Skyloft Knight Academy student, you should know how to use a sword. It's a short flight away."

"Eh, alright. I suppose I should brush up on my skills – to show I'm better than Link… and better than the dead."

* * *

Peatrice looked out over the line of laundry and at the cucoo-pen. She'd come to the Surface to live, after all – along with her husband who was no hero, but provided enough. Truth be told, she actually did most of the work, running the family business of storage-lockers, which was booming with all of the new arrivals coming down from the Sky, unable to fit all of their junk into the cabins and stone and brick houses they were building.

"Mommy! I caught one!"

"That's nice, Anju," Peatrice said with a bored yawn.

Peatrices' little daughter proudly held a white hen nearly as big as she was. "Catch the Cucoo" seemed to be her daughter's favorite game right now. She'd hoped the girl would grow out of it, at least by the time she got big enough to illicit the night-remlit-like reaction these tasty Surface-birds were known for.

The woman was waiting for Cawlin to come back home after a trip into the heart of town. He'd been to some kind of therapy-session with the old Fortune-Teller. Her life now as it was years before seemed to consist mostly of waiting. She couldn't say that her life was a fairy tale, or even that she was particularly satisfied, but things were close enough for her. Sometimes, all one could do was settle for "close enough."

She wondered what she'd tell Anju when she grew older and asked how her Mommy and Daddy met. Peatrice would say that theirs was a bond of lonely souls.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 12 **


	13. More than Conquerors

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 13: More than Conquerors **

Magical torches lit the throne room of Hyrule Castle. They were low-level and the light was dim, casting everything in a red-orange glow. Link, clad in his night-clothes, stood before a suit of armor mounted on a mannequin. Golden light shimmered off the breastplate, embossed with the image of a wolf's head. It had been custom-made for him, even though he preferred his tunic and mail. His old clothes were getting a bit worn and weren't as loose-fitting as they used to be. It wasn't because of weight, as with most men as they aged - with Link it was more a matter of muscle and the many repairs that Skyloft Knight's set had gone through over the years.

He traced the breastplate with his finger. The wolf… that was decided on a whim. Zelda had said something about him having "eyes like a wolf" and some people in the court as well the designer of this armor had said that he was "wolf-like," and so he sort of had an animal symbol assigned to him. The Hylian Royal Family would always be represented by the wings of a Loftwing and the Triforce as their crest. The wolf was just a personal symbol. He'd observed them and had learned about them. They'd once been the subject of myths, but like their Surface-home, they'd proven to be quite existent. People saw them as brave animals, loyal to their families. Link thought that described him pretty well.

Link's sensitive ears caught the soft fall of footsteps behind him – small, bare feet – and then a small, quiet yawn. He turned around to see a certain thirteen-year-old who should have been peacefully asleep at this hour. His blond hair was an unruly mess dripping down to his shoulders – he kept it tied up during the day and refused to have it cut. His eyes were tired and his ears were slightly droopy.

"Pipit…what are you doing up?" Link asked very softly.

"I could ask the same of you," the boy answered, rubbing his eyes.

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No… I just couldn't get to sleep. Again."

Link put an arm around him. "Maybe some warm milk would help. You can stay up with me if you need to."

"I hate this insomnia," Pipit complained. "It's, like… something just comes alive in me at night sometimes... It's almost like a hangover from another life or somethin'…"

Link froze for a moment at the last line. "Nah. You must be worried about something," he said. "You sleep alright when things are going well. You only seem to have this problem when something's the matter."

"Yeah," the prince sighed, "The last time I was up and down patrolling the halls every night was when you were sick. I was worried you were going to die and there was nothing I could do about it… I couldn't even see you because the doctors were so afraid I'd get sick, too."

Link rubbed his back. "It was tough on all of us, but I'm alive… all healed up. So, if you're worried about me getting sick again…"

Pipit shook his head. "It's not that."

"Then what is it, son? You've got me worried."

"I know what you're doing up, Dad," the boy said. "Eldin Province is a mess right now and you're here looking at your armor and swords because you're thinking of being the Hero again."

"H-how did you know that?"

"I am observant."

"I am the king and the people on the borders aren't listening to your mother or to me. I think we've reached the limit of what edicts and politics can do. You don't need to worry about me, Pipit. I am the Hero. I've gone through many things. You're a kid. The only things you should worry about now are your studies and not having enough fun. You should be giving me worries, kiddo, not the other way around."

Pipit hugged his father. "I said I'd find a way to watch over you," he whispered.

Link, puzzled, held his son in an embrace as he sat with him on the larger of the thrones until the boy started softly snoring. The father then carried the son up to his bedroom and put him to bed. He smiled and carefully stepped out of the room and closed the door, intent on going back to his own bed, hoping not to disturb Zelda with his climbing back in.

His eldest son was like his namesake in many ways, but one way in which he differed starkly was in being such a worrywart. He remembered Pipit the First as being laid back about everything – even when Zelda had vanished from their island, he was sure things would work out and would tell Link to be upbeat about it (totally unaware of the hardship Link was going through, or even the existence of the Surface at the time). As he was growing up, it seemed like Pipit the Second had made his parents' welfare his personal sworn duty. The kid was putting too much upon himself.

All Link wanted for each of his children was to be happy.

* * *

The weather was partly cloudy over a sizeable mining-town called Jerome. Prince Pipit bade his Loftwing to land on its outskirts. He stood in a trench and patted the other half of his soul on the beak. He saw the dust of a horse from his hidden vantage-point. He'd tailed his father, who opted for horse-travel this time into Eldin. A Loftwing skimming just above and below the clouds was faster. The Crimson Loftwing had been suffering stress of late, something that the heat and the dust of Eldin would only exacerbate. The king's choosing to travel by horse had given his son the perfect opportunity – for he wouldn't be seen from high in the air, certainly with the presence of wild Loftwings being a common sight in the skies above all the provinces.

Pipit's gray bird chirped. He gently asked him to quiet himself. "You need to lay low and stay here until I whistle for you. I'm going to tail Dad and see what's up, and if any trouble breaks out…"

The boy patted the sword on his him. It had been hanging up on one of throne room walls and he'd felt strangely drawn to it. He'd grabbed it and girded it onto himself quickly, certain he'd need protection. He looked down at the sheath…

"Oh, no! No! No, no, no!" he yelped. "This is the wrong sword! I thought it was… oh, shi-!"

He'd inadvertently taken a "sacred" blade. It wasn't a truly holy sword like the Master Sword was – he'd have had to have gone to Hylia's Temple for that and he knew he could never use the thing or even budge it out of its pedestal because it was a sword bound to his father's spirit and only accessible in the direst of times. Only the soul in the sword could decide when she was needed. Even Link couldn't use her right now. There was some darkness left in the world, but the world was not dark enough.

The sword presently on Pipit's hip was the one that had belonged to his namesake – a piece kept as a memorial that, while maintained for aesthetics and general preservation, had not been sharpened or maintained for actual use since before he was born. If he broke it or damaged it in any way, he didn't want to think about the consequences. Link and Zelda were by no means abusive parents, but they had some creative punishments involving the taking away of privileges, chores and, for budding young swordsmen – unpleasant character-building training techniques. The last time he was made to hold a pair of full water buckets for a set period of time, young Pipit felt like his arms were going to fall off at the shoulders! He was sure that losing or wrecking this important sword would earn him some far more interesting and creative ways to pay off the debt…

It was the disappointment in his parents' eyes that the boy dreaded the most. This object was one of the last things they had as physical reminder of their friend, something that the man had used and touched. Pipit kept a ceramic bowl belonging to his first pet remlit in his bedroom. He knew that the sentiment was kind of like that, but even deeper.

Beyond that, there was the fact that he was now carrying a weapon that hadn't been used or been readied for use in over a decade. A blade with dull edges would serve him for naught if he actually had to use it to defend himself or his father. A heavy steel stick was better than nothing, Pipit supposed, but he still scolded himself for not paying attention when he was grabbing a piece for his journey. There were plenty of swords around the castle – his father kept at least three for practicing different fighting styles. Why did he grab this one?

Pipit snuck around to the back of the town center – just an open space among a circle of shacks – and wove his way into the back of the large crowd that had gathered there.

"Oof! Sorry, little girl, I didn't' see you there," a large man said as Pipit accidentally ran into him. Pipit just nodded and tried to push his way to the front. People sometimes mistook him for a girl due to the way he tied his hair and the soft facial features he'd inherited from both his parents.

"It's the king!" someone said. "The king has arrived!"

The people started chanting. "Link!" they shouted as one, "Link! Link! Link!"

Pipit peered out from between people's waists and rear ends. His father rode his horse back and forth, a big black beast. "Easy, Agro," he said. He was decked out in his heavy armor with the golden wolf's-head breastplate to which was attached a green cloak.

"Our king has come to lead us into glorious battle!" someone said. The people all around Pipit were mostly adults, though there were a few people his age. Young children huddled around women and elders in the doorways of the houses. The central crowd was made up of rough-looking men and women. Those without weapons had improvised weaponry – farming and mining implements and things commonly seen in kitchens. One person held a pole with a homespun battle-flag bearing Din's symbol, topped with a crude wood-carving of the winged Hyrule Crest. One man, as large and muscular as a Goron (but he was a human), was wearing a shaggy pelt. Once Pipit got a glimpse of the pelt's face-skin, horror shot through his young bones. The man was wearing a Mogma-skin.

Link rode calmly back and forth. He calmed the crowd by holding up a palm. Pipit could not believe what he was seeing. These people expected his father to lead them to conquer? Dad had been talking up and down in the castle and in the square about pursuing peace with the Mogmas. Pipit had met some of his father's friends among the race before and he knew that both Mom and Dad practically sided with them, despite the species-difference. Dad even said once that he feared the wrath of the Fire Dragon upon the Hylians if they kept digging too far into the mountains in violation of various treaties.

Jerome was the furthest "inland" of the mining towns and, despite royal orders, construction of new structures (processing structures, not homes) was going on even further in and this "construction" came with a lot of destruction that paid no heed to the landscape, or to its inhabitants. Everyone obeyed the forest-laws, for Water Dragon Faron did not mess around, but the Dragon Eldin was rarely seen.

"People of Jerome!" Link shouted, "People of Eldin! I have come to set things right! One of you has just informed me that you've captured some criminals. Show me the trespassers you have captured and I'll show you what is to be done with them!"

Pipit shivered. His father's voice was rough. It was a tone of voice similar to the one he used in the center of Hyrule City when making addresses, but it had a decidedly dark quality to it now that his son found disturbing.

The crowd moved and Pipit followed with it, trying to avoid being crushed by bodies. By the sword he wore, people must have assumed that he was there to fight. He worried that he might just be caught up in a battle. He was willing to fight alongside his father, but not if he thought the cause was wrong. Maybe there was something about the situation he did not know? Maybe some Mogma warriors or terrorists had been attacking this little town? The boy found himself behind the man in the Mogma-skin shirt and had to suppress a feeling of sickness.

Link slid off his horse and let one of the townspeople take the animal by the reins. The town leaders had led him to a pair of stakes in the ground upon which were tried two Mogmas. Their arms were bound behind their stakes and their tails were firmly tethered. They kicked their small hind-paws helplessly in the air.

"Link! Link, buddy!" one of them yelped, "Can you help us out here?"

"Yeah! Talk some sense into these hotheads!" the other one insisted.

"Heh," Link laughed, "Ledd and Cobal… I'd expect you two to get into a situation like this."

"Yeah, we were just digging for roots around this here village and the next thing we knew these guys were stringing us up! They're as bad as the red guys!" Ledd explained.

"Lies!" the guy in the skin roared. "They were destroying our potato crop! They were sent by their rat's nest to mess up our plantings to starve us out!"

"It's not like that at all, I swear!" Ledd pleaded.

"Yeah, we two were just hungry! We didn't know it was yours!" Cobal chipped in.

Link looked to them, then to the crowd of villagers, his eyes betraying no passion. He calmly unsheathed his sword. "I will show you what needs to be done," he said.

"What?" Ledd exclaimed, "Link! What are you doing?"

"He's gonna kill us, man!" Cobal cried.

"Kill the moles!" the crowd started chanting.

Pipit's jaw hung. He watched his father take a determined stance. In an instant, Link wheeled around in a spin-attack. The stakes toppled and the ropes were cut. Ledd and Cobal picked themselves up off the ground. They where unhurt and free.

"I knew you were still a stand-up guy, Link!" Ledd exclaimed.

The crowd, however, was angry. "Our own king has betrayed us!" one woman with a big kitchen knife wailed. "The Hero of Hylia is a traitor to his own people!" someone else shouted. Link, for his part, stood, his sword still out. The pair of Mogmas hid behind him.

"This has got to end," Link said, his eyes fierce. "I have not betrayed our people by standing up for the rights of theirs. I have been your Hero, but I know a simple truth – in the end, we all save each other."

"Traitor!"

That was when Pipit ran out from the crowd, unsheathing his sword along the way. He stood in front of his father, ready to protect him and to fight with him. The crowd outnumbered them, but maybe this evened up the odds a little.

"Pipit?" Link asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I followed you," the boy confessed. "In the end, I'd rather fight with you."

"We'd better run!" Ledd said, digging into the earth. "This crowd's gonna slaughter us!"

"The Hero of Hylia has turned his back on Hylia's children!" the crowd roared. They edged closer, as if unsure that they wanted to harm their king or the young prince. Link stood his ground and wished that Pipit wasn't standing his. He'd find a way to get out of this while protecting his boy from harm.

"Oh, Pip," he sighed, "You should have stayed home."

"If I can dig out of here and get my bomb bag…" Cobal suggested.

"No!" Link barked. "It'll make things worse."

"We can flee," Ledd said, "but what is going to happen to you?"

"We'll take care of it," Pipit said.

Just then, everyone looked skyward as a loud screech sounded. A great blue Loftwing alighted on the top of a sizeable rock formation. A feminine-looking figure stepped out upon the flat top of the red rock, backlit by the sun. Her golden hair flowed freely in the wind. She drove the tip of a long straight sword into the stone. The sound of it echoed across the valleys.

"Step back from my son and my husband!" the figure commanded. The crowd drew back, gazing at the Goddess, for surely, Zelda appeared in that strong sunlight, with her Loftwing behind her as the very image of what she'd been in a former life. Her sword was sharp and her eyes were sharper. Some of the gathered crowd could have sworn they were glowing, too, though it may have been an optical illusion.

"Mom?" Pipit asked, looking up.

Link laughed in relief. "What are you doing here, dear?"

"I knew there would be trouble and I followed you both. I was going to let you handle this, Link, but Pipit went missing and I knew just what he'd be up to. Karane is keeping things safe back home."

Zelda turned to the gathered crowd and spoke to them in a cold voice. "I am going to take my men home. I expect the freed captives to go quietly back to their homes. I expect the rest of you to do the same. What is to be done with both trespassers and _people who would turn upon their king_ will be discussed in court. Rest assured; your Hero has not betrayed you – or me."

* * *

Tubert balanced on his tail in the garden of Hyrule Castle. Taurin giggled and gently poked the pads of his hind-paws. Tubert wiggled his toes for him. "As always, my best feature," he said.

"I'm going to miss you, Uncle Tubert," Araucana lamented. "Do you really have to go far-far away?"

"I'm afraid so, little miss," the Mogma elder answered.

"Is there any other way?" Link asked, seated on a garden bench with Zelda.

"I do not think so," Tubert said with a sad shake of his head. "My people have discussed it extensively. There are lands where we can move to and places where we can live underground. Some of us are calling it the 'sub-rosa' region. The Mogmas will be safe there. Your people can have the lands in Eldin. We've mined most of the treasures we really want out of it, anyway."

"That's a lie and you know it," Link said.

"Yes, there are many glittering things we would like to have… as well as our villages and tunnels… but we really feel like we have no choice. Your people are like the stars – and they do not want to share space with us. Gorons have been moving into the area, too. New lands will be a new adventure for us."

"If you say so," Pipit added. He paced about the garden in the grass.

"We wish you well," Zelda said. "I feel… I feel like I have failed you."

"Not at all, Lady Zelda. This is a decision my people have all reached together. We move around to new territory from time to time."

He looked to Link. "Before we go, I do have a present for you, King Link."

"Oh?" Link asked as Tubert passed something into his hand. He felt a tingling in his wallet, and then held up the small black diamond.

"A rupoor," he said with a sour face.

Tubert passed another piece into his hand with his other paw. It was a rupee in the amount the rupoor took. "Just a joke, for old time's sake."

Link chuckled. "I wish you many more suckers like me wherever you go, for what it's worth."

"Looking at your children, I have a lot of hope for the people of Hylia," Tubert said. He waddled back to the hole he'd dug into the garden and disappeared down it.

That was the last the Hylian Royal Family saw of their friend, Tubert, or of any of the Mogmas.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 13**


	14. The End of an Era

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 14: The End of an Era **

Wings broke the clouds. White vapor slid effortlessly over red feathers. A child around ten years of age laughed as the cool wet spray came over his face. His grandfather held him tight. Wild Loftwings took notice of one of their own. Bloodfeather had returned to them, bearing his partner the Brave Man and a new passenger – a Hylian hatchling. Even those that were not flying near to Bloodfeather could sense his presence as well as the energies of his charges.

The Loftwings had been once, the birds of the gods. In the ancient times, they ferried goddesses and powerful spiritual guardians. They were guardians, themselves. Their kind had been glad to carry the children of Hylia as they made their lives on the sky-islands. Each of them found a young Hylian with whom they felt a special resonance and became halves to a whole. As the sky to the land and water and love to life, so were Loftwings to their riders.

The red bird swept in an arc over Skyloft. That particular island had been central in the Empire of the Sky. The people of that island did not always give their birds names – for if they did, they would be hopelessly human names, too clumsy to convey the relationship between Hylian and Loftwing. The birds, however, had their own names for one another and for the humans they knew. These names would never have an accurate translation in Hylian, even if the humans could decipher avian concepts. Some of these names were conveyed in vision, in touch and in smell. Some depended solely upon the spiritual sense.

Unlike human-given names to people, creatures and objects, the "names" given by Loftwings changed to suit growth, change and times. This was why Bloodfeather's partner was "Brave Man," now. He was soon to be renamed "Brave Gray Elder," depending upon how quickly his hair grayed. It was still mostly blond, threaded through here and there with strands of silver. In times past, he was "Brave Boy" and before that he was "Loves Sleep" and "Sleepyhead," depending upon the thoughts any given bird had of him.

The Loftwings around and above Skyloft today watched as the Brave Man dropped down onto the island with the hatchling clinging to him. None of the Loftwings had met the little boy before and none conveyed to any of their fellows feeling a "calling" to him. For now, he was "Hatchling," as all the un-paired children were to the avian culture.

After dropping off his humans, Bloodfeather glided in the sky with his fellows. They sensed his mind as he did theirs. They were happy, feeling free, and grateful for the sun on their backs.

Broken-Toe, a bird with a black body, uttered a soft, low whistle from her beak. Her question was "Why would any of them want to go down there anymore?"

"To see," Bloodfeather chirped.

"It has been deserted for long," clucked Remlit-Eater, an old brown bird.

Bloodfeather closed his eyes and threw out a bit of his senses. "My boy wanted to show the son-of-his-son the place where his people came from."

The Crimson Loftwing still referred to Link as "his boy," even though he was well into middle-age and creeping into elder-hood by this time.

Link's children had grown and had been finding love and settling down. Taurin was still single, in part because his siblings had been trying to fix him up with women-friends that they knew before finding out that a _girlfriend _was not where his leanings lay. They might have continued to try to play matchmaker, but he'd told them it was best not to.

He enjoyed being under no pressure to marry and generate children, being the last-born of the king and queen. The role of a youngest royal child, he felt, could be served through the promotion of culture and art. If he found a lover anytime soon, it would be at his own pace – no pressure from family or the Council. He did not envy his big brother Pipit, who'd had the old biddies on the Council clucking and bothering him full-force from the time he turned sixteen until he married at age twenty-five over the type of person he was to marry to carry on favorable bloodlines. That was the burden of the firstborn royal male alone.

If tradition went like it had in some of the old books, Araucana might have fared even worse. Being female, she may have become tribute to some neighboring kingdom; given to a prince she didn't know as part of a peace-bargain. Thankfully, there was only one kingdom of Hyrule on the Surface-lands and even if there were other human kingdoms, Queen Zelda wouldn't stand for that kind of nonsense.

The firstborn of King Link's grandchildren was Gustaf, the eldest child of Prince Pipit, now ten-years old and ready to fly up to the sky islands. Gustaf walked around the empty streets of Skyloft, hand-in-hand with his Grandpa. Link had not brought him here to sense for or to call a Loftwing. His son, Pipit, had done that. Neither of his other two children had ever been interested. Most of the Surface-born children were not interested in riding Loftwings. There was something about that Link could not fathom, but he took it as a sign of his people becoming one with the Surface again – a gradual breaking of the generations-long partnership.

A final freeing of the Loftwings.

"You are the Hero's steed," Remlit-Eater clucked to Bloodfeather. "Your partnership is still strong with him, but when he and you are gone, none like you will rise again."

Bloodfeather chirped sadly. "It is the end of an age… We have served the gods by serving the Hylians, but as they become ground-walkers, they shall have no need of us anymore. Our skies will be lonely."

"You don't have to think of it that way," Broken-Toe sensed to him. "We all come and we all go. Perhaps the gods will see fit to give us other forms – for our bodies or for our souls."

"I've seen horses running across the plains," Bloodfeather chirruped, "My boy has ridden horses. Maybe, when he and I are gone, in another life, I'll be his partner as a beast with four hooves."

"I'd rather be of the stars," Remlit-Eater answered, "in the abode of the Golden Goddesses."

Grayback, a young Loftwing, joined them. "Maybe we shall just be free… for a while," he clicked. "The skies will be ours and we can watch the Hylians and the other peoples from above. I've never had a human on my back and do not want one. Far too heavy and they grab at your feathers, don't they?"

"Tis why we have riding-belts," Bloodfeather answered, "Although mine feels a little tight sometimes."

He looked below at his charge and the little hatchling as they walked along the great island.

* * *

"So, here's where you used to live, Grandpa?" Gustaf asked brightly. "It seems so small. Lots of people used to live here?"

"Yeah. Over there was Mr. Gondo's house when I was a kid, and that house over there was where one of my best friends used to live with his mother – the one who saved my life that your father is named after… And Mr. Sparrot used to live waaaay in the back."

The little houses looked little different than they did when Link had lived on Skyloft. A few had peeling paint on their exteriors. One house had a window missing and in the crook of the windowsill – a nest of young remlits. The doors were unlocked, Link found, when he could step inside them and see the light from the stained-glass decorative windows paint colored patterns on the floor. Beds had been stripped down to their frames – that is, the beds that people had found too heavy or too much of a trouble to bring down to the mainland. Sinks and clay bowls remained in some houses. In some properties, there were still shelves and things upon them. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust, and not just Mallara's old house.

Link took Gustaf through the Bazaar, parting the heavy curtains that were left to keep people out. The king showed his grand-prince the places where all of the old shopkeepers in Hyrule City used to do their business. He pocketed some empty bottles at the potion-makers' old booth with its large, empty tubs, still sticky from medicine residue in the bottoms of them.

"I wouldn't try to taste that, Gus," Link cautioned. "It may just be modified stamina fruit juice, but it's old and highly concentrated. I don't like the looks of the mold at its edges, either. Here. This is a little present that should serve you well."

"An empty bottle?"

"You'd be surprised at how rare good glass like this is!" Link said. "Bottles like these are useful for many things, and they say it's the only way to keep a fairy."

At this, Gustaf's eyes lit up. He was still at an age where chasing fairies in the woods was adorable behavior.

"Just put some air-holes in the top if you do," Link chuckled.

"Why is everything abandoned?" Gustaf asked as they made their way to the old Academy grounds.

"Well," Link answered, everyone has decided to live on the Surface now. There are a few people on the pocket-islands, but mostly, we are the people of the land now. People lived here for a while, before you were born, but gradually, people bled out of here at a steady pace as down below had more opportunities and resources. Look up. This is the Knight Academy I trained at with your grandmother. We just have the Royal Knight Academy down on the surface where we train people to ride horses instead of Loftwings. It's just the way Time flows…"

"Aren't you sad, Grandpa?" Gustaf asked.

"Yeah, I am," Link confessed. He opened the first floor doors and led his grandson into the dusty halls of the Skyloft Knight Academy. "This place was a proud school. People from all over the islands got an education here and the knights trained here to rescue people and they helped everyone when they were first chosen by their Loftwings. There's the classroom I used to go to when I was your age. No one really trained to become a knight so young, but everyone got a basic education here. Those of us who stayed on started training to become knights."

He turned a corner. "Here's the old cafeteria. I used to tease the lunch lady by moving her pickle barrels. She'd threatened to have me expelled when I broke few pots messing around." Gustaf stared at the oven that had once been used to make bread, letting his grandfather go off on a nostalgic tangent.

"Come on. Down the hall is my old dorm. It's been used by many knight-students since I last had it." When Link opened the door, he stood shock still. The room was empty – completely empty. There was no bed, no desk and there were no shelves. It had been completely stripped. It seemed highly weird to him to see it like that. Gustaf's footsteps echoed cacophonously in the vacant air.

Link looked around and was bitten with the memory of many things. His cupboard where he kept his clothes and his practice swords… of course he'd taken that to the Surface when he could and used the swords to train his children. Gustaf was getting pretty good with false swords, too. His little twin sisters were too young yet and his little cousin was still in his Aunt Araucana's belly. Link was sure that all of his grandchildren would be into swordsmanship and archery, just as his children were. Link wondered if Gustaf's uncle Taurin was perhaps a little too good – he'd lined the dining hall of the palace with trophy heads because he's gained a taste early on for hunting. He'd outclassed his father in bringing meat home from the wilds to the people of Hyrule City.

Link looked to the empty space where his desk used to be -the desk where he'd stayed up late into the night with lights on and candles lit, scrawling out essay-assignments and solving mathematical and physics problems with a quill made from a small Loftwing feather. Its place was occupied by a patch of discolored floor now. He'd left the desk to future students and had no idea what the late Headmaster had done with it. Link also remember many rainy days spent at the desk with his carving tools trying to turn random blocks of wood he'd found into art.

The empty place where there was no longer a bed hit him the hardest. Not even the bed-frame remained. Again, it was a piece of furniture he'd left for future knights after his use of it had ended. It was gone to who knows where. Perhaps the last of the Skyloft Knights had taken it when they decided to be a Surface Knight and needed scavenged furniture to make a home.

Link had a lot of memories of that bed. It had been a safe place for him to cuddle into when he'd learned his parents' fate and the instructors at the Academy had decided to house and educate him. It was a place where he'd sat and talked to Zelda on many an occasion – the door to the dorm left open so the Headmaster wouldn't get any wrong ideas about what his daughter was doing in a boy's room. Many were Link's memories of lounging in that bed, not quite wanting to wake up, when Zelda bounced into the room to shake him up or sent her screechy Loftwing as an alarm-clock through his beside window.

He remembered the time that he'd almost died in that bed, too… Back when he was searching for Zelda, fighting through the monsters and the dangers of the Surface had left him grievously wounded. He did not want to alarm anyone, so he tried to hide all of his weakness and pain when visiting home, only to ultimately fail. The Skyloft Knight Academy did not have much in the ways of a medical facility, at least one prepared to treat the injuries he'd incurred, so the instructors and the apothecaries had sewn him up, wrapped him up and dosed him up right there. Instructors and student knights took turns keeping a watch on him. Link's memories were vague, but he recalled Pipit holding him down while he pathetically tried to get up, moaning about going to save Zelda and the older boy saying something about the dead being no good for helping her.

He had definitely pushed himself too far back then, and was grateful that Impa had been watching Zelda in another time while he spent a good chuck of what was then the present-time recovering from the consequences of courage and stupidity. Everyone was very kind to him then, too. He spoke of serious matters with Headmaster Gaepora – things others would not understand. Instructor Owlan gave him herbs to help him sleep though his pain. Pipit kept him company by night, having been given allowance to change his night patrol route so as to watch over him and in the day, he fetched Link pumpkin soup. Fledge liked to show off his budding strength by carrying Link places he needed to go in the Academy, such as the restroom.

Other rooms in the Academy were similarly stripped of their furnishings and homey-touches. A few rooms had empty bookshelves or desks that had been left behind. The halls felt eerie with the hanging chandeliers, unlit. The only light that streamed in was from the high windows with colored panes. Upstairs rested the largest room in the Academy: The Headmaster's Chambers. Link took Gustaf inside.

"This is where Great-Grandpa lived?" he asked.

"Yeah. He would speak with students here and he kept lots of old books and maps – they can be found in the Hylia Temple Library now. Your Great-Grandpa was a good teacher."

"Do you miss him? … I didn't even get to know him."

"Yes, your grandmother and I miss him very much."

"He was carried off by his Loftwing like people used to do, right?"

"Yes and the last one. Let's go outside."

Link took Gustaf to the upper floor of the Academy grounds, past the dry bath and outside. "The night watchman used to do his patrol down there." Link said, pointing down. "Back and forth, back and forth. I used to play pranks on him when I had the time."

"That's mean."

"I suppose so; the remlit-bombadier game was, at least."

"And over there was where the Goddess Statue stood."

"The one in the center of the city back home?"

"The very same. I crash-landed her, but I can't tell you how. You're too young for that story yet."

"No I'm not!"

Link laughed. "What your father will know when he becomes king and what you will know when you become king is that sometimes, kings must keep secrets."

The two wended their way back through the deserted city. They took some time to strip down to their underclothes and swim in the great Skyloft pond. Link took great care to keep Gustaf away from the edges, since there were no Rescue Knights flying around here anymore. The two had splash-fights and then dressed in their dry clothes to visit the cemetery.

"These are family markers," Link explained to his grandchild. "Most of the names on them are of people who were sky-buried with their Loftwings. There has been talk of having some of the strongest birds and strongest riders get together to take these slabs down to the Surface to be put in the care of their families."

Gustaf crouched down and traced names with his finger on one stone – the one belonging to his family line, into which Link's parents had been grafted as his family had no generational established clan. Gustaf traced over the name of Gaepora. Link felt a twinge of sadness, but remembered that the man had died well, at peace, and very old. He'd entrusted the future to his daughter and to his Hero-son-in-law and they were already making good on attempts to create a good future for the Hylian people.

"I think they should be left up here," Gustaf said. "All the people whose names are here were sky-people. Also, it's nice to have some ruins in the sky to come back to."

"People are not calling Loftwings anymore," Link answered. "This place used to be my hometown and now it's all in ruins, like the ruins I explored when I first went to the Surface. Now the Surface is becoming new again, and it is home that is the ruin. I'm not sure anyone will take care of this place or even be able to see it after a while…"

"I think the cucoo-people will remember."

"Cucoo-people?"

"Don't you see them, Grandpa? They've been watching us the whole time. They've been hiding."

Link shook his head, thinking that this was just another one of the stories Elder Batreaux had been teaching the children at his school. Then he was startled by something that almost made him jump out of his skin – or his brain explode. He wasn't sure which had almost happened.

Waddling out from behind one of the memorial markers was a golden birdlike creature with a humanoid head. Its eyes were like jewels. Link almost felt like reaching for his sword, but the animal made no move of threat.

"_Fear not,"_ it said in a voice that echoed into his head more than was actually spoken. _"My kind are people of the Goddesses. The Loftwings are our brothers and sisters. We helped in the creation of the world and we watch over lost architecture. We have found it our place to move in here. Rest assured, we will take care of the memory of your people and when they touched the sky long after your people have forgotten it." _

After that, the silly-looking creature waddled back behind the grave marker and vanished completely. Link looked for her fruitlessly.

"Grandpa? What just happened?" Gustaf asked.

"I honestly don't know," Link answered.

* * *

Bloodfeather heard the whistle-call beckoning him to swoop in and gather his charges.

The last of the Loftwing riders would visit the deserted islands and eventually leave them be. The birds, themselves, would become their "own whole" again when wild birds were no called by humans or felt the stirrings themselves. They would be free to be their own purely wild creatures now, or to go to the place of the gods. Some, perhaps, would take to Surface-life, evolving to be smaller after several generations to fit in better with the pressures of the land.

Hylia's children had returned to the surface, therefore, the sacred contract of the Loftwings was up.

For some, like Bloodfeather, the thought was bittersweet. He could sense that he would not take his master from a pyre when his time came if the did not pass on first or if they did not pass together. He was, perhaps, the first bird who determined himself not to let his grief kill him if that is what it came to. He was the brave mount of a brave Hero and should become a symbol for his fellow Loftwings and for the people they loved.

He took his people home to a budding new world that he'd become a part of but never quite knew, while knowing that their lives limited them from knowing the world that he knew.

He left King Link and Prince Gustaf off near the castle stables.

* * *

**END CHAPTER 14**


	15. The Flow of Time

**UNITING THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH**

**Chapter 15: The Flow of Time **

The world as it was lay between depths and heights and it lay in layers. There was the sky above and the secret places of the earth below, the past behind and the future before, water, stone and fire, life and death.

A hunched old man hobbled along a cobblestone trail through a patch of forest to his home. His mustache was white and had curls on its ends. His white hair was done up in the bun that had been customary for him for many years. He was practically ancient now, in body, and knew that he would seen be exiting immediacy and entering the world of memory quite soon. He still had people to counsel, however, and people desperate to know what his visions of the future were.

Sparrot preferred to be called a man and to be addressed with male pronouns, but the truth about him was that he was caught in-between. He dressed the part, preferring robes and to keep his hair in a feminine style, while never shaving his mustache. He disliked being asked what he "really was" as he found it damnably rude. "Having been born to walk two worlds," he thought, made him especially qualified for his profession. He walked both the material and the spiritual worlds, as well as the past, the present and the future. He was an enigma to the "normal" world and quite liked it that way.

He briefly wondered if the man being haunted by a lovelorn ghost was having any luck with the exorcism techniques he'd taught him. Sparrot felt bad about that. Even though his client was married and did not need or desire a spectral mistress, he knew the poor thing had been a lonely young girl when she'd died and only followed her intended because of his eloquent words. Mr. Cawlin had told Sparrot a story about how he'd crafted a love letter for a lady who'd rejected him and had thrown the thing down a toilet in frustration. It was indeed a strange place for a haunting – a toilet, but apparently, that was where the ghost had chosen to be before attaching herself to a frustrated boy. The key, Sparrot said, was to make the ghost understand that her "boy" was now a man and that he was a living man with a living wife. The wife knew nothing of the haunting. She could not see or hear what Mr. Cawlin was plagued by and never believed him when he tried to tell her about it.

Not everyone could see the things that Mr. Sparrot could see. The King of Hyrule had sometimes spoken to him of how nobody believed him when he spoke of the spirit in his sword – now the Master Sword – at first. He'd seen the toilet-ghost, too, but had kept quiet about it. Sparrot thought that the people would be more accepting of the strange and ethereal upon finding out the Goddess had been made flesh in their current queen, but people were still not quite easy with magic that seemed a little "too magical."

Sparrot, for his part, felt vindicated when he'd first come to the Surface. He had dreams about it all the time and had seen visions of things in his crystal ball that he had never seen in life – things like the "sea of sand" and the "fire-mountain," – things that were impossible, things that sometimes earned him ridicule if he spoke of them to the wrong people. They existed. They had existed the entire time.

He made it to his little cottage and eased himself into a plush chair. Despite the dangers of the lingering monsters on the Surface and the tensions that had come to the people with Surface-life, Sparrot still kept his door unlocked, always. He never knew when someone might need his advice or when some tired soul might need to make use of his cushioned couch or bed. If he had one vice it was, perhaps, that he had a strange fascination with watching people sleeping. He liked to guess at their dreams by reading the twitching of their eyelids. He tried to reach into their minds, which was easier to do when a person was asleep and their mind was unguarded. The truth was, Sparrot wasn't much of a mind-reader. He was a psychic, but that was not his particular gift. He had a level of intuitive empathy, but his gift lay more in the reading of Time than in anything else. His empathy-ability was really no more than what one would get with a good therapist, one self-taught in the art of observance. People gave themselves away in subtleties that were purely physical and able to be seen readily. A sufficiently-observant person never needed to "tap into the mind" in a supernatural way to get a good idea of what a person was thinking.

No, Sparrot's Goddess-gift was Foresight and even that was incomplete. Everyone at the Bazaar made fun of him the time he'd dropped and broken his crystal ball. They asked him how that could have escaped his prediction. What they did not understand was that his sight was not for the "smaller things" like that and that he'd been ignoring an overwhelming feeling of foreboding the entire day before the fateful accident. He'd broken his ball because he did not listen to his intuition. That was the way things went for him. Even the clearest of visions he saw when he did his scrying were a matter of possibilities rather than certainties.

The gods that created their universe had given them the ability to choose and to seek the future – it was an open road, a blank ticket. Sure, there were many probabilities and the call of Destiny, but even the Hero had not known the outcome of his battle against Evil when he'd taken up the sacred sword. Life would be boring, Sparrot supposed, if everyone knew exactly what lay ahead of them. Every "future" Sparrot had ever seen was unwritten, something that could go one way or another. His Foresight was usually accurate, but if he had a dire prediction, it could be thwarted with the right choices on the part of the people he'd delivered the prediction to. So, too, a favorable prediction could be swayed if someone made the wrong kind of choice or became greedy and overeager to force it to happen.

"I'm glad the world didn't end," he said to himself dreamily as he settled deeper into his chair. King Link had done well as the Goddess' Chosen Hero. Sparrot was proud to have been able to help him. When he'd told him of treasures to be found, Sparrot knew that his predictions were spot-on, unlike the Foresight, for he had seen lands that already existed and the things that were already present within them. Farsight was much more reliable than Foresight.

Indeed, Link and the Goddess Hylia, now Zelda, had done well in leading the settlement of the Surface. The people had made quick work of establishing themselves in the frontier, so much so that by now, the Sky was empty save for a few stalwarts.

Sparrot thought to various people he'd met along the journey of life and of how they'd fared in creating the Surface. He'd seen their possibilities and probabilities and, most important of all, he'd seen what they'd created. His big, lovely eyes were old now, rimmed in wrinkles. They had seen many things.

* * *

The strong, red-haired boy: If every life is a story, this boy's life was a tale of transformation. As a youth, his psyche was ruled by the concept of power and he used his physical prowess to lord it over others. He thought mostly of himself and of how to get what he wanted. Sparrot did not need his crystal ball to see that he was insecure, however, and that his cruelty toward others was only a way to tell himself that he was stronger than he was.

His pride was broken by the Hero – and not in a way that was on purpose, but merely through the events of Destiny. The red-haired boy began thinking of others. Having a heart beneath all of his muscle, he determined himself to protect a wizened elder and to help the Hero in his quest in whatever way he could. For the first time in his life, the boy found worthwhile work and hidden talents. Ultimately, however, these things left him with a feeling that he did not belong in his own era and could do better in the age of lost technology. His energy had, at one point, completely vanished from the current age.

Sparrot knew that he had met some of the boy's descendants when a strong people native to the Surface had come to the land of Hylia's children. He did not need Foresight or Farsight for that. He saw it in their faces – a peculiar shade of gold to the eyes and blood-bright hair…

A look into his crystal ball once told him that these people would become mighty, but that there was a distinct possibility of something very unfortunate happening to them in the form of a birth beneath a bad sign. There was a distinct feeling to the vision that one person would spark the unraveling of the very people he was to come from. Sparrot had no idea if it spelled extinction or just dispersal, but he did not foresee a particularly favorable future for the children of the strong boy who lived outside of Time.

* * *

The young knight of honor and the lady-knight of honor: During the wedding of the king and the queen, Sparrot had given fortune-readings to the wedding guests. He had to make a living and business was good this day. Of course, Link and Zelda were to be read for free. Everyone else got a discount of the usual Bazaar-rate.

Sparrot got a sinking feeling in his spirit when a laughing young couple came up to him.

"Oh, Karane, this is ridiculous!" the boy said.

"Oh, come on, Pipit! I know it's silly, but it'll be fun!"

"Alright, but I can't say I trust anything that comes out of someone staring at something shiny and saying some magic words. The future is what we make of it."

"Oh, that is true, young man!" Sparrot agreed, to the young Skyloft Knight's surprise. "The things I behold with my lovely eyes are mere possibilities, but I assure you, I am almost never amiss! Ask dear Link about my services if you will!"

"Okay, so what do you see for the future of our relationship?" Karane giggled. "Will our wedding be half as grand as this one?"

Pipit gulped. The boy's cheek-freckles gained a backdrop of red.

Sparrot stared at them for a few moments, looking back and forth between them and his crystal. He could not give them the full truth of what he saw. After all, what he saw was only a possibility – something that could change.

Within the crystal, Sparrot clearly saw the girl, alone and dressed in armor. She appeared, for a moment, as if she were a statue made of iron. The boy appeared as a statue of white marble for a moment and then the vision flashed back to the girl. He saw her traveling through the many lands of the Surface, but she was alone. The boy she loved so much was not with her. This conspicuous absence disturbed him. He was sure it was the source of the sinking feeling within his spirit.

The fortune-teller looked back at the couple in front of him and saw waves of strength emanating off the girl. Around the boy's form, he saw a dark shadow. There was only one instance in which Sparrot saw that kind of shadow on anyone. It was a sign that Death had marked them. This could sometimes be changed, but not often. The shadow was tinged in green, which denoted a death earned by courage. Sparrot tried to think of a way to warn them that would be accepted by skeptical teenagers getting their fortunes read for a lark. He stared into his ball for more than five minutes.

The girl put her hands on her hips and stared at Sparrot, her eyes narrowed. "So, what is our future together going to be like, hmm?"

Sparrot fumbled. "Clouded," he said.

"Clouded?" Karane yelped in disbelief. "What do you mean, 'clouded?"

"I mean 'clouded," Sparrot re-iterated.

"Hmmph!" the lady-knight groused.

As she turned away and the boy moved to follow, Sparrot reached out and grabbed him by the hand and looked up at him urgently. "I advise you to take caution with your activities, young man," he said.

Pipit shrugged and disengaged his hand. "You upset my girl," he said crossly and then he walked away.

The day he'd heard that his prediction concerning the boy had come true, his heart broke. He dimmed the light on the shop he had in the center of the Hylian Settlement then. There were some bright spots to Time's flow here, however.

The girl did indeed live up to the waves of strength and the vision of iron. Like the boy who'd loved her, she'd saved their king's life when it had been put in danger. She'd met another strong and gallant man and had children. Karane had only recently retired from her position of protecting the royal family. Her son, Krin and her daughter, Impala held knight's positions in her stead now.

As for the ill-fated boy, Sparrot thought that, perhaps, he didn't have such a bad fate, after all. Everyone dies, but few have brave deaths. Besides, in one life a boy could only aspire to be a knight. In another, one could become a king.

* * *

The timid-boy: Sparrot had first met him at the Bazaar. He'd come in one day looking to buy some stamina potion from the apothecaries. He did not have enough pocket-money and so had come to him for a fortune-reading just so he didn't waste his time completely in coming to the indoor marketplace.

"W-will I ever become strong?" he stammered. "I…I… I'm the weakest person in my class. I've been working out every night, but it's just no use."

The first thing Sparrot had noticed on the boy was a smell. He knew that he did not physically smell anything – it was something that seemed to be wafting in from the future, something that Time was telling him. Sparrot could not place the odor. It smelled like dust and like… animals. Loftwings had an odor to them – a scent of feathers. Most people did not notice it, but feathers gathered the oils from a bird's skin and there was a unique aroma to them. A few people on the island called it a "stench," but those who really loved their Loftwings, and especially Skyloft Knights, all seemed to love the smell. It was the scent of a noble animal. Remlits also had a subtle smell according to some.

The scent wafting off this boy was something Sparrot had never smelled before – distinctly beastly and almost like cut grass, and that mixed with dust.

The fortune-teller took a look into his crystal ball. He saw the scrawny boy with muscles – very nice muscles. He tossed heavy pumpkins into the air with ease.

Sparrot smiled. "You are going to get quite strong very soon, young friend," he said.

"Really?" the kid replied. "Will I… ever be as strong as Link? Link is a good friend of mine… You've probably met him, he comes here all the time – he's got the green knight's uniform."

Sparrot looked into the crystal again and saw strange and beautiful animals. He saw a vision of the boy riding one and of Link comically falling off one of the same kind of creature.

"I think you may become even stronger, young man," Sparrot whispered.

Sparrot had never ridden a horse. They were the new living muscled-fuel of Hyrule, enabling communication and commerce overland. The fortune-teller had never found an animal tame enough and large enough to carry him. He had been quite heavy for some time, he had to admit. The old purple Loftwing was strong, but even he was aging and could no longer carry both their weights. The bird nested in a stable next to the woodland cottage.

Sparrot could see a black shadow over both their forms. It was tinged with blue, which meant that he could expect both of their stories to end peacefully.

* * *

The settling of the Surface had involved all kinds of people, including, even, those considered crazier than Sparrot was. Then again, the settlement's "Sage of Happiness" had more innocence than he had, and perhaps, considering what she had tried to do for the sake of peace, more courage.

Sparrot's friend Gondo from the Bazaar didn't need his fortune read. With his love of grease and gears, he was creating the future of Hyrule. For what it was worth, the fortune-teller's visions told him that some of the technology that Gondo was developing and reviving would be lost again in the future. He hoped the man could keep it going for as long as possible.

* * *

The fate of functional immortals was destined to be sad. Sparrot knew of the little ancient robot that lived in Hylia's Temple with the Master Sword. Sparrot had a hard time reading anything that involved electricity. He deliberately kept his cottage only on magical lighting because too much electricity buzzed in his head when he tried to do intense readings. He could work around it, but reading a being made of metal with electricity in its veins was too much for him.

The Sword, however, he could sense the destiny of. It was Destiny, with the capital letter. Link had set the spirit of the sword to sleep indefinitely as it destroyed the Source of Evil. However, Sparrot knew… he didn't just predict the possibility…he _knew_ the sword would be taken up again in a future age. That sword was the most important thing to the future and continuance of the Hylian people (among others) aside from the Triforce itself.

And that is where everything fell to possibilities again. Sparrot once visited the Temple of Hylia and cautiously touched the top of the sword with his little finger. He dared not do anything else with it. He was sent to the ground in a trance. Gondo was there and had to pick him up off the ground and sit him somewhere comfortable to recover. The mechanic had said he'd been foaming at the mouth and spouting gibberish.

When Sparrot had recovered, he did not know how to convey the jumble of images that he'd seen.

The one set of things that were constant: The blood and the spirit of the Hero and the Goddess. The spirit of the Hero was bound to the spirit of the Master Sword, so that bond was not surprising. What was surprising was the sea of possibilities connected to the sacred blade. No future felt particularly stronger than another to Sparrot.

Sparrot actually feared the sword a little after that - The blade had the power to cleave Time.

The fortune-teller had a vision of the spirit of the Hero in another life and of the sword itself fragmenting into three parts. One fate was a tragic one for the Hero and for Hyrule – a period of the kingdom ruled by an iron fist granted power by a fragment of the ancient Evil that the sword had sealed away in this life. The sword was lost and found again. Another fragment involved the Hero victorious, only to have to leave the land. Again, this was a tragic fate for Hyrule, involving a destruction and a new frontier not unlike the settling of the Surface from the Sky. The third possibility involved the reconciling of two estranged worlds and Hyrule standing strong. There was something in the last vision about a "redemption of darkness."

Sparrot was pretty sure if he shared any of this that he would not be believed.

After all, the future was not set in stone, and even if it was, stone can be chiseled again.

* * *

Sparrot looked into his crystal and concentrated on Hyrule Castle. He saw a vision of it expanding and being added to. He saw it torn apart and warped by evil influences only to be rebuilt. Such was the fate of the land, as well. There would be wars and rumors of wars and cycles of good and bad times – and always, the spirit of the Goddess and the blood of the Hero.

The flow of time is always cruel and its pace seems to be different for every person. In time, even a newborn's life must fade.

For now, however, Hyrule was a newborn. There were many adventures ahead for this new world.

* * *

**END. **


End file.
